Teacher Discussion Forums

hello everybody, I've got to have a summarizing idea about "pragmatics" and "discourse analysis". can anyone help me have a clear and meaningful defintion for both words.

Thank you,

Hi Azamouri - it's helpful if you try and answer this kind of question yourself first - it's the kind of thing you can easily look up and it saves other people having to do all the hard work. Then we can see exactly where any problems lie.

How about (Lori) if we create a sticky along these kinds of lines?

Woody, I don't think we need stickies to tell people that their questions may be too broad or whatever. Leave the questions there to sink, and perhaps to be rescued by those with time to spare (and that could be me!).

I'm not saying it would work that well, but when people do ask questions properly it is stimulating instead of annoying, so it makes a big difference. Anyway, assuming Azamouri is a stranger to search engines, here's some wiki stuff, with Japanese language versions just a click away.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourse_analysis


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pragmatics

This latter article has an interesting titbit: "Linguistic pragmatics underpins Judith Butler's theory of gender performativity. In Gender Trouble, she claims that gender and sex are not natural categories, but called into being by discourse"

If, at some point, you want to make a sticky, you can. In general we don't have too many stickies, but one for people posting questions, with some general ideas of what to do or not would be okay. Although, in this forum, it will probably turn into a ten-page thread