Main themes |
The pragmatic approaches of language, as put forward by Austin, Searle or Grice, offer strategies of interpretation of texts and complex works (mixed media like the opera or the theatre), which are both fundamental and revealing.
The course will present the most important notions, as well as some more recent research (Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson, Lo Cascio, Cosenza), and will apply them in a critical fashion to different literary and dramatic texts.
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Content |
When we read libretti, plays, and novels, we are confronted with very complex linguistic problems. The writers, through a literary artifact, reflect on how language works. Sometimes, they analyze communication and its failures (in a certain way, they do metalinguistic research). In other cases, a close linguistic reading reveals new textual and interpretative implications, often overlooked when a reader concentrates on content or the narrative dimension. The pragmatic and linguistic analysis of texts by Pirandello and Metastasio will help us to understand a series of problems, related to communication and to its representation in literature, understood as a form of investigation of human cognition.
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Bibliography |
Stephen C. Levinson, La pragmatica, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1993.
Claudia Bianchi, Pragmatica del linguaggio, Bari, Laterza, 2003.
H. Paul Grice, 'Logic and Conversation', in: Syntax and Semantics. Vol. 3. Speech Acts', ed. P. Cole e J. Morgan, New York, Academic Press, 1975, pp. 41-58.
Idem, 'Further Notes on Logic and Conversation, in: 'Syntax and Semantics. Vol. 9.
Giovanna Cosenza, La pragmatica di Paul Grice. Intenzioni, significato, comunicazione, Milano, Bompiani, 2002
Carla Bazzanella, Linguistica e pragmatica del linguaggio. Un'introduzione, Roma-Bari, 2005.
Dan Sperber et Deirdre Wilson, La pertinence. Communication et cognition, Paris, Minuit, 1989.
oeuvres:
Luigi Pirandello: Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore, Il fu Mattia Pascal
Pietro Metastasio: L'Olimpiade
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