eng412s05

English Discourse and Pragmatics

James Madison University

Professor:
EMAIL:
Office:

Dr. Sharon A. Cote
cotesa@jmu.edu
Keezell 209, Ext. 8-2510

Availability:

I am available during my office hours and by appointment.

Description: What do we need to know to communicate successfully in English? It's certainly not enough to be able to put together a grammatical sentence; we have to know how to choose among the equally grammatical options available to us, how to refer to people and things in a way that will let our hearers understand who and what we're talking about, and how to indicate the relation between what we're saying now and the last thing we or someone else said. Native speakers of English make these and other decisions every time they open their mouths or put pen to paper, as well as every time they interpret the words of others. Nonetheless, just as they can distinguish between 'good' and 'bad' sentences without necessarily being able to tell you why one is acceptable and the other isn't, so it is that they generally do not have conscious awareness of the linguistic information they use to make these pragmatic or discourse judgments. In this course, we will discuss modern research on pragmatics and discourse structure in order gain insight into the linguistic principles underlying these decisions. More specifically, this course will be structured as a seminar. We will study current research critically, in an effort not only to come to a better understanding of the nature of the language we speak, but also to learn what the unanswered questions are in this field of knowledge and how one would go about trying to answer those questions.

Required Materials:
Most of the reading for this course will be available on reserve outside my office and in Carrier Library. Rather than needing to buy a textbook, you will need to photocopy this material as it is made available. Some handouts will be given out in class.

Work and Grading: Class Participation (5%), Assignments (20%), Midterm (25%), Research Projects (25%), Final Exam (25%). All work must be turned in on time, and all work must be done independently except when explicit permission is given for group assignments.

(A note on assignments: Some assignments will simply be marked as satisfactory or unsatisfactory, but some may be graded. "Ungraded" assignments are still handed in, but they just require an acceptable effort on all parts of the assignment to receive credit (ie., The answers don't have to be right, but you have to try!) There is a regular assignment that is in addition to any specific assignment for a particular week; for every assigned reading, you must write down one question about that reading and one comment related to it. Details will be discussed in class.) A good participation grade requires advance reading of materials to be covered, and overall preparation and willingness to ask and answer questions and to contribute to other class activities. Note: As in all your courses, your work for this course is subject to the JMU Honor Code. If you have a question or uncertainty about how any aspect of the honor code relates to your work in this course, see me for clarification as soon as the issue arises.

Daily Schedule: (Note that this is a tentative schedule of what will be discussed in each class period. Changes are very possible. Check for revisions!)

Date	Text/Topic	Other Readings
1/10	So, what's dis course about, anyway?
1/12	Can you hear thoughts?	Reddy - "The Conduit Metaphor" (pp. 286-299)
1/17	NO CLASS -- MLK Jr. Holiday
1/19	Four Simple Rules for Talking to Me	Grice -- "Logic and Conversation"
1/24	I know that you know that I know that you know ...	Clark and Marshall -- "Definite Reference and Mutual Knowledge"
1/26	PRACTICE - no regular class, but you may work on assignment 2 in groups	Re-read Clark and Marshall and remember to turn in question/comment for this article at my office by end of classtime
1/31	Truncating and such	More Clark and Marshall discussion
2/2	It's all new to me	Prince -- "Toward a Taxonomy of Given-New Information"
2/7	Changing Reality with a Word	Austin -- "Performative-Constative"
2/9
The messy truth - speech acts and transcribing	No new reading but Shakespeare handout available outside K209
2/14	While we're on the topic	Reinhart -- "Pragmatics and Linguistics: An Analysis of Sentence Topics"
2/16	What we will have today is a class on non-canonical sentence structures and such	Birner -- "The linguistic Realization of Inferrable Information"??
2/21	The day we really talk about the Birner article :)	No new reading but bring Birner Question/Comment and see other assignment
2/23	Pragmatics -- Fact or Fiction?	Excerpt from Adams -- "Pragmatics and the Interpretation of Fiction"
2/28	Looking backward and looking forward	PREPARING FOR THE MIDTERM
3/2	MIDTERM
3/7	SPRING BREAK -- NO CLASS
3/9	SPRING BREAK -- NO CLASS
3/14	A coherent discussion of coherence in language	Hobbs -- "The Coherence and Structure of Discourse"
3/16	A coherent discussion of coherence in language and in literature	Hobbs and the analysis of the Milton poem
3/21	PROJECT MEETINGS - Is this a Discourse, or What?	USE THE CLASSROOM TO MEET WITH YOUR PARTNER OR ARRANGE TO MEET ELSEWHERE
3/23	Sentences and Discourse	Cote -- "Elaboration: a Function and a Form"
3/28	Could you put that in writing?	Tannen -- "Spoken/Written language and the Oral/Literate Continuum"
3/30	Write what I say! - testing the theories about spoken/written language
4/4	He Said, She Said, They Said	Maltz and Borker -- "A Cultural Approach to Male/Female Miscommunication"
4/6	Does It Talk Like a Duck?	Cameron -- "Performing Gender Identity"
4/11	Getting Involved and Getting the Joke	Norrick -- "Involvement and Joking in Conversation"
4/13	Getting Children Involved in All This?	Ermala --Involvement in Children's Literature"
4/18	Making a mountain out of a Molehill - metaphor	Gibbs -- "Metaphor as a Constraint on Text Understanding"
4/20	How Ironic, Mary Said Sarcastically	Kumon-Nakamura et al -- "How about another Piece of Pie: The Allusional Pretense Theory of Discourse Irony" (selected pages)
4/25	Whatever...	Kleiner -- "Whatever - Its Use in Pseudo-Argument"
4/27	[FINAL PROJECTS ARE DUE} Last Words
5/4	TAKE-HOME EXAMS DUE by 4pm

"The essence of language is human activity..." Otto Jerspersen

Look here for assignments:

Due 1/12/05
Due 1/26/05- must be in the box outside my office by the end of classtime
Due 2/7/05
Due 2/21/05
FIRST MINI-PROJECT DUE 2/23/05
Part 1 of Midterm, due no later than Thursday, 3/3/05, by 4:30pm.[A definitions list that you may find helpful is available HERE.]
SECOND MINI-PROJECT DUE 3/28/05 [For anyone who didn't get a copy, the coherence relations handout given out on 3/16 is available HERE.]

MIDTERM EXTRA CREDIT OPTION HERE

LOOK HERE SOON FOR FINAL PROJECT INFORMATION AND TOPIC IDEAS