Pragmatics across Cultures Group 1

Pragmatics is the study of language in use, i.e. it tries to find out how speakers employ language to convey (a particular) meaning in a particular situation. Consider the sentence -My computer isn't working.- Depending on the context, there may be different interpretations. It can merely state the fact that a computer is not working. If you are a teacher, however, and one of your students utters this sentence, you are probably justified in taking it as an excuse to explain why s/he has not handed in the homework s/he was supposed to print out. If, on the other hand, you are the owner of a computer shop and one of your customers who has just spent a fortune on a new computer utters this sentence, it is almost surely meant to be a reproach. The linguistic meaning of this sentence is constant in all cases, but its pragmatic meaning is different in the different contexts. After introducing the key notions and concepts of pragmatics, we will focus on the newly established discipline of variational pragmatics, which is situated at the interface of pragmatics and dialectology and aims at systematically investigating the effect of macro-social pragmatic variation on language in action. We will examine whether there are differences in the realization of speech acts in different (regional) varieties of one language – e.g. compliments in British English and American English, requests in Austrian German and German German, apologies in Canadian French and French French or thanks in British and New Zealand English. Please note: Participants must have successfully completed their 'Grundstudium' (Lehramt)/ the 'GK Introduction to Linguistics' (MA). Jautz, Sabine, Dr. Universität Siegen SoSe 2012 Introduction to Linguistics