Spanish Pragmatics

Course goals

After completing the course students will:

1) know the main concepts and theories within the field of pragmatics.
2) have broadened their knowledge of the pragmatics of Spanish and its varieties, as well as of Hispanic intercultural communication.
3) have developed analytical and evaluative skills in speech acts, implicatures, (dis)politeness, communicative interactions, interactional corpora, and materials.
4) have developed the ability to create and adapt materials through tasks that foster the development of pragmatic and intercultural competence.
5) have developed research skills through methods of data collection and analysis.

Content

After a preliminary study of pragmatics (concepts, principles and theories: context and use), the student will learn the pragmatic varieties of Spanish (deictic expressions and forms of address, implicatures, (dis)politeness in the Hispanic world, requests, refusals, apologies and compliments), their acquisition in different contexts, especially L2 and heritage language. Different streams of empirical research will be studied. Aspects related to the teaching/learning of this intercultural competence in Spanish L2 classes will be discussed (materials, tasks, interactions, etc. will be analysed and evaluated) as well as methods of data collection for future research. Materials will be prepared to develop pragmatic and cultural competence.