This course goes beyond the ´classic´ linguistic disciplines, such as phonology, morphology, lexical semantics and syntax, which focus primarily on the description of language structures and which typically make only a sporadic reference to the meaning and/or use of those structures in the real world. Pragmalinguistics does just that: it is concerned with how meaning is negotiated when language structures are used as utterances and what happens to people and the world. In the course we will be looking at samples of language use from the course-book and, more importantly, we will do our own original analyses and interpretations of the uses of language which we will collect in our own daily life.
During the course we will try to answer questions such as

What is an utterance and what does it mean?
Do utterances mean something in themselves or it is rather the utterers who mean things?
What ´things´ do we do when we use language?
Can an utterance/user mean more than what it/they literally says/say?
How are we able to communicate what we mean?
How do we negotiate meaning?
What kind of knowledge is needed to interpret each other´s meanings?
and many others.