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Gimme the paper! – Could you please pass me the paper? – I wonder what's in the paper today... People usually intuitively know how to ask somebody a favour, how to apologize or thank somebody in an appropriate way. This course approaches issues of appropriateness and politeness from a linguistic perspective. The first sessions provide critical discussions of major pragmatic theories such as Austin's and Searle's Speech Act Theory, Grice's Cooperative Principle and Brown/Levinson's Politeness Theory. In the second half of the course, the focus will be on individual speech acts. We will look at the range of possibilities to express requests, apologies, thanks, compliments, etc., and discuss variables influencing the choice of specific realisations (e.g. issues of power and culture). |
