Pragmatic approaches about language

• Grant number: 10/51253-8
• Support Opportunities: Research Grants - Young Investigators Grants
• Start date: May 01, 2011
• End date: April 30, 2014
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Linguistics - Portuguese Language
• Principal Investigator: Tatiana Piccardi
• Grantee: Tatiana Piccardi
• Host Institution: Escola de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (EFLCH). Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP). Campus Guarulhos. Guarulhos , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 11/11168-4 - Approaches on language according to pragmatics, BP.JP

Abstract

Ever since Austin (1975), precursor of what we currently call social pragmatics (Mey, 2001; 2001a), pragmatic studies aim at seeking an answer to the question: what do speakers actually do when they speak? Such studies are supported by a philosophical perspective (Austin, 1975; 1993; Wittgenstein, 1953) that deconstructs the myth of neutral representational language, and lays emphasis on the subject's agency in the speaking situation. In communicational contexts that constantly increase in complexity, and whose origins can be associated with the effects of globalization - in which multilingualism (regardless of whether it is dialectal or sociocultural) becomes the rule rather than the exception - looking into language from the point of view of pragmatics can assist in dislocating the senses of what language is and promoting the bases for an understanding of human communication in which the agency of the subject - imbued of a non-idealized competence - or of an encoded competence (Blommaert, Collins e Slembrouck, 2005) – becomes central. The project "Pragmatic approaches about language" in the Language undergraduate course at the Guarulhos campus of Unifesp (Federal University of São Paulo) aims to consolidate in São Paulo universities, mainly in emerging centers like Guarulhos campus, studies that offer theoretical bases for the understanding of the effects of speech in highly complex communicational contexts, so as to continue the work carried out by Dr. Kanavillil Rajagopalan, specialist in Semantics and Pragmatics of natural languages, at IEL/Unicamp, of whose research group I am a member. (AU)