English 420 : Topics in Pragmatics

Professor Richard F Young

Fall 2014 on Tuesday & Thursday from 2:30 to 3:45pm in 214 Ingraham Hall

Questions in pragmatics

1. I know the kind of actions I can perform with my body and with tools I use, but what kind of actions can I perform with my words?
2. Sometimes, I am in conversation with somebody and, although we both know exactly the meaning of every word, I still don’t get what the other person is driving at. What am I missing?
3. I know some people who are forever saying please and thank you, just like my mother taught me when I was a child. And then there are some other people I know who rarely say please or thank you, and I know my mother would say they are not being polite, but nobody else seems to bother. Why is that?
4. Why did the defense attorney object when the prosecutor asked the defendant when he had stopped abusing his daughter?
5. Say “It’s cold in here” and mean “It’s warm in here”. Can you do it?—And what are you doing as you do it? And is there only one way of doing it?