3 credits
MW 9:30-10:45
SY 003

The course is concerned with principles of language choice and
language usage (performance) as well as aspects of linguistic
structure that directly interact with features of context.  In
particular, it explores the choices individuals as well as communities
make in their daily lives as well as the communicative use of language
i.e., the choices speakers make, the constraints they encounter in
using language, and the effects their use of language has on the other
interactional participants. Topics to be covered fall under three main
categories: (a) Language choice, language planning and Language
attitudes; (b) Language Use--deixis, presupposition, appropriateness
or felicity, inferences (connecting what is said to what is mutually
assumed or what has been said before), speech acts, and
conversational implicatures; and (c)Institutional
Discourse--verbal interactions in domains like law courts in
traditional and modern societies, politics, counselling, medical
interviews, and the relevance of extra-linguistic context for the
interpretation utterances.