In an essay or format of your choice, for instance, you may wish to simple answer each question or compose a essay and answer the following questions in reference to the three reading excerpts (Wardhaugh, Green, and “Pragmatics: Meaning and Context.” Please feel free to cite from the readings, lectures, films, or any other resources (APA or MLA format is fine for footnotes). Don’t hesitate to express your own opinion and draw upon your own experience.
Wardhaugh, “An Introduction to Sociolinguistics”:
Please briefly summarize the main ideas in the excerpt.
What evidence does Wardhaugh mention for the effects of social structure on language? differences in the way they speak? How might these differences be biological or innate?
In many languages, one uses the masculine pronoun to refer to either a male or a female (for example, ‘Every student should hand in his work in time.’) Is this ‘sexist’? Can you think of other cases?
What evidence could you give for and against the ‘no relationship’ position?
Green, “Pragmatics and Natural Language Understanding”:
Please briefly summarize the main ideas in the excerpt.
From the description, it seems as if every act in life is part of pragmatics. Do you think that pragmatics is the study of all actions, or should it be limited to only certain actions? What kinds of limitations would you propose?
The final sentence is this brief extract mentions ‘beliefs about …beliefs.’ How can we know about a person’s beliefs when we are analyzing their actions and utterances?
If the swimmer doesn’t want assistance (in the example), how does that affect analysis?
“Pragmatics: Meaning and Contex”:
Please briefly summarize the main ideas in the excerpt.
What do you think is the ‘invariant core’ meaning of the word ‘ball,’ as proposed here? Can you think of any use of the word ‘ball’ that would not have that ‘core’ meaning? Can ‘the ‘context’ cause a word not to have its ‘core’ meaning?
What does the term ‘context’ seem to refer to in this text? If you have a different concept of ‘context,’ how would you revise this paragraph to illustrate it more clearly?
