Performative Pragmatics

Sample Syllabus for Graduate Seminar

(one class meeting per week)

Texts:

  • J. L. Austin, How To Do Things With Words
  • Jacques Derrida, Limited Inc
  • Horst Ruthrof, The Body in Language
  • Erving Goffman, Frame Analysis
  • Douglas Robinson, Performative Pragmatics
  • course pack (Searle, Cavell, Butler, Nietzsche, Freud, Foucault, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Burke, Bourdieu, Goffman "Face-Work," Brown and Levinson)

Syllabus

Week
Topic
Reading assignment
1
introduction
-
2
performatives
Austin, How To Do Things With Words, first half
3
parasitic speech acts, iterability
Derrida, Limited Inc, "Signature Event Context"; Searle, "Reiterating the Differences"
4
parasitic speech acts, iterability
Derrida, Limited Inc, "Limited Inc abc ..."; Cavell, "What Does Derrida Want from Austin?"
5
performative identities
Butler, from Gender Trouble; Robinson, Performative Pragmatics (ch. 3)
6
speech acts
Austin, How To Do Things With Words (second half); Robinson, Performative Pragmatics (ch. 4)
7
frame analysis (keying, fabrication)
Goffman, Frame Analysis (ch. 2/3/5/6, skim ch. 4); Robinson, Performative Pragmatics (ch. 5)
8
frame analysis (breaking frame, talk)
Goffman, Frame Analysis (ch. 7/10/11/13, skim ch. 12)
9
implicature
Grice, "Logic and Conversation"; Robinson, Performative Pragmatics (Part III)
10
the lived body
Husserl, from Ideas II; Merleau-Ponty, from Phenomenology of Perception; Mauss, "The Techniques of the Body"
11
the haptic body
Ruthrof, The Body in Language (1-97); Robinson, Performative Pragmatics (ch. 11)
12
the haptic body
Ruthrof, The Body in Language (98-178)
13
the body as the site of social regulation

Nietzsche, from Genealogy of Morals; Foucault, "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History"; Freud, "On Narcissism," "The Unconscious," from first lecture of Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis; Bourdieu, from Distinction

14
docile bodies and corporeal signification
Foucault, from Discipline and Punish; Butler, from Bodies That Matter
15
politeness and face
Goffman ("Face-Work"); Brown and Levinson (from Politeness); Robinson, Performative Pragmatics (ch. 12)

Requirements: one 1-2-page response paper every week; 10-20-page research paper

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