Pragmatico- linguistic analysis of Italian literary texts

Teacher(s)

Maeder Costantino;

Language

Italian

Prerequisites

- to be familiar with the main event in the history of Italian literature.
- to be able to express oneself orally in Italian.
- to be able to write a text in Italian.
- to be familiar with the main ideas of narratology and of textual analysis.

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.

Learning outcomes

At the end of this learning unit, the student is able to :
1	Be able to recognize the phenomena presented in class within texts; Be able to formulate textual interpretations that take into account the analysed elements; To have read a series of literary and dramatic texts; To be able to analyse critically a text as seen in class; To be able to give a critical analysis of a text using the means detailed in the lectures.

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.

Teaching methods

 

Evaluation methods

First and second session:

• Written paper handed in at the beginning of the session.
• Oral exam on the content of the lectures and defense of the written paper.

If the paper is not handed in at the beginning of the session, the student is not authorized to attend the oral exam.

Bibliography

Lectures théoriques:

• 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', édité par 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

Faculty or entity

ELAL