Discourse and Pragmatics Dr. Rodney Jones

This course aims to give you the skills to analyze language use in real life situations to find practical solutions to communication problems you might face in your everyday life at work, in school or at home.

Intended Learning Outcomes

By the end of this course, students will be able to: 

1) Explain the principles and methods of the major schools of discourse analysis, including textual analysis, conversation analysis, ethnographic discourse analysis, pragmatics, speech act theory, politeness theory, genre analysis, interactional sociolinguistics, critical discourse analysis, multimodal discourse analysis and mediated discourse analysis. 

2) Apply these theories and methods to the analysis of real-life texts and interactions.

3) Use this analytical process to solve practical communication problems in workplace, professional and other organizational settings.