General Linguistics: Experimental Pragmatics

<p>How do we understand irony, metaphors, and meanings that are only implied in conversation? In this course, you will explore how people interpret language and how researchers use experiments to investigate human communication.</p><h3>Explore How We Interpret Language</h3><p>This course provides an introduction to experimental pragmatics, a field that examines how people understand and use language in different contexts. You will learn how researchers combine theories of language use with methods from experimental psychology to investigate how meaning is interpreted.</p><p>Throughout the course, you will study pragmatic phenomena such as reference, presupposition, implicature, irony, and metaphor. You will also explore research on how language is understood by different groups, including children and adults, as well as neurotypical and neurodivergent individuals.<br/></p><p>A central theme of the course is the relationship between theory and experiment. You will learn how to evaluate the ways experiments are used to support or challenge theories of language comprehension and how different research methods contribute to our understanding of human communication.<br/></p>