Course Description:
Close examination of
speech act theory and its relation to philosophy, with
a particular emphasis on the work of J. L. Austin. Topics
include performative utterances, locutionary, illocutionary and
perlocutionary acts, conversational implicature, and the relationship
between pragmatics and semantics. We shall also be exploring
the potential relevance (or lack thereof) of these things
to traditional philosophical problems in ethics, epistemology
and metaphysics. Texts: works by Austin, Searle, Grice,
Cavell, Strawson, Martinich, Vanderveken, and/or others.
Requirements: weekly reading assignments, seminar presentations
and term paper. Prerequisites: graduate student status,
or consent of instructor.
SYLLABUS (Includes
course requirements and instructor contact information.)
COURSE SCHEDULE