ENG4118 – Pragmatics: Meaning, Communication and Cognition in English Language

Schedule, syllabus and examination date

Course content

Pragmatics is the attempt to understand how we can communicate with each other. We can (and often do) communicate something different from the meaning of the words that we utter. The founding question of pragmatics is: How is this possible? How can a speaker and her addressee coordinate on a meaning going beyond the linguistic code?

This course explores the most important theories that have been proposed, and shows how they are increasingly being tested in experimental and developmental work.

The topics covered include

  • the distinction between sentence and utterance meaning
  • the distinction between explicit and implicit meaning
  • pragmatic principles
  • the development of pragmatic abilities in children

In the second half of the course we look in depth at how the theory provides insight into one area of language use: for example we might look at figurative use, including metaphor and irony; or at polysemy and lexical modulation.

Learning outcome

After completing this course you will

  • be familiar with the intellectual background of pragmatics, in particular Grice’s work on meaning and on conversation
  • have extensive knowledge of modern pragmatics, in particular relevance theory`s account of communication
  • have deep insight into the distinction between encoded meaning and what is communicated
  • have deep insight into the explicit/implicit distinction in communication
  • have extensive experience in analysing utterances in the terms of pragmatic theory
  • know how pragmatic theory is tested by experimental and developmental work

Admission to the course

Students who are admitted to study programmes at UiO must each semester register which courses and exams they wish to sign up for in Studentweb.

If you are not already enrolled as a student at UiO, please see our information about admission requirements and procedures.

It will be useful if students have taken ENG2152 – Varieties of English Texts, ENG4152 – Variet