2-IKV-181  Meaning and Communication

Evaluation during the course: test, essay

Concluding evaluation: test

Subject aim: To extend students‘ knowledge of methods and results of philosophical investigations of expressions meanings from so-called pragmatic point of view; to present a theory and analysis of particular kinds of speech acts.

Brief curriculum of the subject:

- Logical analysis and analysis of language practices – two rival approaches?

- Meaning of an expression as its use (usage)

- J. L. Austin about meaning; meanings of „meaning“ by Austin performatives versus constatives

- Speech act as the basic unit of communication

- Performative and constative utterances 

- Taxonomy of speech acts and its criteria

- Locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary aspects of a speech act (discussion: Strawson – Austin - Searle)

- Referring as a speech act

- Applications of the speech acts theory

- Elaboration of the speech acts theory byRozpracovanie teórie rečových aktov v prácach J. Searla, štruktúra ilokučných aktov

- Psychological theories of meaning; H. P. Grice – sentence meaning and utterer’s meaning

- Logic and conversation; conversational „implicatures“

- Conversational maxims

Literature:

Austin, J. L.: Ako niečo robiť slovami, Kalligram, Bratislava 2004

Grice, H. P.: Studies in the Way of Words, Harvard University Press 1991

Koťátko, P.: Význam a komunikace, Filosofia, Praha, 1998

Searle, J. R.: Rečové akty, Kalligram, Bratislava 2006

Language in which the subject is taught: Slovak

Date of the last sheet revision: 29. 6. 2007