ALC8008 : Language & Intercultural Pragmatics (Inactive)
- Inactive for Year: 2025/26
- Module Leader(s): Dr Peter Sercombe
- Owning School: Education, Communication & Language Sci
- Teaching Location: Newcastle City Campus
Semesters
Your programme is made up of credits, the total differs on programme to programme.
| Semester 1 Credit Value: | 20 |
| ECTS Credits: | 10.0 |
| European Credit Transfer System | |
Aims
Aims of the module include enabling understanding of pragmatics, when interactants are from more than one language background. This is linked to ‘relevance theory’ and the nature of explicit and implicit meaning in pragmatic (mis)understanding. ‘Intercultural’ pragmatics necessarily connects with other disciplines (anthropology, linguistics, and psychology) and seeks to comprehend ostensive-inferential aspects of communication and how these are affected by the (language and culture) backgrounds of those partaking in interaction.
Outline Of Syllabus
Week 1: Module content overview: aims; structure; assessment
Student expectations; semantics/pragmatics interface; emergence of ‘Intercultural Pragmatics’ (ICP).
Week 2: Sociocognitivism and intercultural Pragmatics (ICP)
Social (collective) and cognitive (individual) basis of pragmatics, for interactants - speakers and hearers. Personal agency, proxy agency, and collective agency.
Week 3 Grice and relevance theory; Speech acts across languages and cultures
Relevance theory, a framework for study of cognition and communication: understanding utterances as a matter of inferring speakers’ communicative and informative intentions.
Week 4 Context and its importance in understanding interactions
Elements of context: influences on discourse meaning; influences by discourse.
Week 5: Politeness and power; Module assessment preparation 1
Whose politeness? Politeness, face and affect.
Week 6: Indexicals
Indexicality of expressions in speech acts, and their functions.
Week 7: Explicatures, implicatures and presuppositions
Explicature and/versus implicature and meaning. Presupposition as presumed content
Week 8: Common ground; metapragmatics and interpersonal evaluation
Prior and actual situational context, meaning construction and common ground.
Week 9: Conversational routines, culture and formulaic language use
Features of pragmatic routines, in context. Recurrent strings, formulas, and their social and pragmatic functions.
Week 10: Doing Intercultural Pragmatics research - approaches and methods
Week 11: Module summary and module assessment preparation 2
Teaching Methods
Teaching Activities
| Category | Activity | Number | Length | Student Hours | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Guided Independent Study | Assessment preparation and completion | 1 | 50:00 | 50:00 | N/A |
| Scheduled Learning And Teaching Activities | Lecture | 10 | 2:00 | 20:00 | N/A |
| Guided Independent Study | Directed research and reading | 1 | 30:00 | 30:00 | N/A |
| Structured Guided Learning | Structured research and reading activities | 11 | 1:00 | 11:00 | N/A |
| Scheduled Learning And Teaching Activities | Drop-in/surgery | 1 | 2:00 | 2:00 | N/A |
| Guided Independent Study | Independent study | 1 | 87:00 | 87:00 | N/A |
| Total | 200:00 |
Teaching Rationale And Relationship
Lectures provide an introduction to the weekly content, establish a basic level of understanding of the topic, provide opportunities for discussion and personal reflections, and signal areas for individual further study and essential and further reading. Group activities are often linked to pre-class weekly reading
Structured Guided Learning activities provide students with weekly opportunities to consolidate learning through guided tasks linked to the weekly topic.
Independent study will enable wider reading, further personal self-reflection and assignment preparation
Assessment Methods
The format of resits will be determined by the Board of Examiners
Other Assessment
| Description | Semester | When Set | Percentage | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reflective log | 1 | M | 50 | Reflective Diary 1: Series of tasks related to topics in weeks 1-5 (1,500 words total) |
| Reflective log | 1 | M | 50 | Reflective Diary 2: Series of tasks related to topics of weeks 6-10 (2,000 words total). |
Assessment Rationale And Relationship
Will give students an opportunity to reflect on the wide range of topics/issues that have been covered in the module, and make connections to their own personal experiences.
Reading Lists
Timetable
- Timetable Website: www.ncl.ac.uk/timetable/
- ALC8008's Timetable