Department of Spanish and Portuguese

Variable Title:  Pragmatics: Language use in context              
Prerequisite:  HISP-S 326 or Consent of the Department

The objective of this course is to examine language use in context (pragmatics) and sociolinguistic variation in different varieties of Spanish. The first part of the course covers the foundational concepts of pragmatics: meaning, context, speech acts, reference, politeness/impoliteness, and discourse analysis. This course will look at grammatical concepts (conditional, subjunctive, negation, preterit/imperfect, word order, etc.) from a pragmatic perspective using data from native and non-native speakers. The second part of the course applies these notions to pragmatic and sociolinguistic variation by examining the effect of social factors (e.g. region, age, social class) on communicative language use. We will analyze data in Spanish from different sources such as colloquial conversation, institutional discourse, and controlled settings using oral and written questionnaires. Finally, students will learn the principles for writing a research paper.

This course carries CASE N&M credit.

HISP-S 429 #6090     1:15P - 2:30P     TR         BH 015       Prof. César Félix-Brasdefer

Note: This class meets with HISP-S 498 #10072.

• N&M
• What are CASE requirements?