HANOI NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF EDUCATION

FACULTY OF ENGLISH
______________
PRAGMATICS COURSE INFORMATION SHEET

COURSSE OBJECTIVES :
On completion of this unit, you should be able to:
- Outline and analyse basic concepts in pragmatics.
- Provide linguistic tools to help you to understand the way in which meanings are expressed.
- Analyse the pragmatic factors that influence our use of language in social interaction.
- Examine the way in which the conceptualization of our experiences is expressed.
- Describe the notation of Gricean Cooperative Principle, implicature and types of politeness strategies in
communication.
- Analyse the deixis and distance, speech acts and events.
- Analyse features of conversation and preference structure in a communicative event.
- Apply relevant theories in the course to daily-life contexts and English language teaching contexts.
- Examine how language users manipulate meaning in their linguistic communication.
- Analyse how different linguistic and cultural group may share similar sets of communicative strategies.
TIME ALLOTMENT
45 classroom hours
3 classroom hours x 15 lessons
MODE OF DELIVERY
Learners' pre-class reading of the materials and/or viewing of video clips, pre-class quizzes, lectures, discussion
in class, and after-class assignments.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS
1. Attendance: Compulsory, which means:
- Learners will not be entitled to take any form of assessment if they miss more than 20% of the class hours.
2. Preparation of the materials in advance: Compulsory because there will not be enough time to deal with
every detail in class and the materials are a combination of the course book and authentic materials which
learners are expected to collect from every-day life and are intended to provide the learners with additional
opportunities to gain more related knowledge through working by themselves after class in the light of the
learner-centred approach to learning. Any learner will be asked to leave the class if it is found that (s)he is
unprepared for the classes.
3. Extra activities: Almost every two weeks, students are required to work in groups to complete the extra
activities which include one of the followings: clip analysis, presentations or writing a comic strip.

1
ASSESSMENT
- Attendance (10%)
- Mid-term test (30%): On-going assessment (Mini tests and quizzes, pre and in-class discussion and
presentation, one mid-term test).
- One end-of-term exam (60%): A written test or an assignment.

READING LIST
Course book: Yule, G. (1996). Pragmatics. OUP

References:
O’Keeffe, A. Clancy, B., & Adolphs, S. (2011). Introducing Pragmatics in Use. Routledge.
Leech, G. 1983. Principles of Pragmatics. Longman.
Mey, J. 1993. Pragmatics: An Introduction. Blackwell.

SYLLABUS
Week Contents to be Covered Preliminary Extra activities
Reading
1 Course introduction Yule, pp 4-10
Definitions and background
2-3 Deixis and Distance Yule, pp 10-17 Clip analysis
(Talk shows)
4-5 Reference and Inference Yule, pp 18-24
6-7 Presupposition and entailment Yule, pp 26-34 Presentations + quizzes
8-9 Mid-term test Yule, pp 36-45 Clip analysis (Sitcoms)
Cooperation and implicature
10-11 Speech acts and events Yule, pp 48-56 Writing comic strips

12-13 Politeness and interaction Yule, pp 60-67

14 Researching pragmatics O’Keeffe, pp 18-34 Writing a research proposal

Doing project work in (Optional)
pragmatics
15 Revision and Consolidation