📘 Course Title: Semantics
📌 Course Code: ENG-406
📌 Credit Hours: 3 (3-0)
📖 Course Contents
1️⃣ Theories of Semantics and Pragmatics
- Understanding meaning in language
- Key theoretical approaches in semantics and pragmatics
2️⃣ Types of Meaning
- Conceptual meaning
- Connotative meaning
- Social meaning
- Affective meaning
- Reflected and collocative meaning
3️⃣ Semantic Field
- Word meaning and its relation to other words
- How meanings are structured within a language
4️⃣ Sense Relations and Lexical Relations
- Hyponymy – Words with hierarchical meaning relations
- Synonymy – Words with similar meanings
- Antonymy – Different types of opposites
- Homonymy and Polysemy – Words with multiple meanings
5️⃣ Syntactic Semantics
- Contradiction in sentences
- Ambiguity in meaning
- Semantic anomaly (meaning conflicts in sentences)
- Entailment and presupposition
6️⃣ Speech Act Theory
- Types of speech acts (locutionary, illocutionary, perlocutionary acts)
- How language performs actions
7️⃣ Conversational Implicature
- Hidden meanings in conversation
- How speakers imply more than they say
8️⃣ The Cooperative Principle
- Grice’s Maxims (Quantity, Quality, Relation, Manner)
- How cooperation affects meaning in communication
9️⃣ Politeness in Language
- Strategies for maintaining politeness
- Face-saving and politeness principles
🔟 Deixis (Context-Dependent Language)
- Person deixis (I, you, we, etc.)
- Place deixis (here, there, etc.)
- Time deixis (now, then, etc.)
📚 Recommended Books
- Burton-Roberts, N. (2007). Pragmatics. Palgrave Macmillan.
- Cruse, A. (2011). Meaning in Language: An Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics. Oxford.
- Cutting, J. (2002). Pragmatics and Discourse: A Resource Book for Students. Routledge.
- Davis, S. & Gillon, S. B. (2004). Semantics: A Reader. Oxford University Press.
- Davis, S. (1991). Pragmatics: A Reader. Oxford University Press.
- Frawley, W. (2002). Linguistic Semantics. Cambridge University Press.
- Griffiths, P. (2006). An Introduction to English Semantics and Pragmatics. Edinburgh University Press.
- Grundy, P. (2000). Doing Pragmatics. Arnold.
- Howard, G. (2000). Semantics: Language Workbooks. Routledge.
- Hurford, R. J., Heasley, B. & Smith, B. M. (2007). Semantics: A Course Book. Cambridge University Press.
- Kearns, K. (2000). Semantics. Palgrave Modern Linguistics.
- Lyons, J. (1996). Linguistic Semantics: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press.
- Riemer, N. (2010). Introducing Semantics. Cambridge University Press.
- Saeed, I. J. (2009). Semantics. Wiley-Blackwell.
- Horn, R. L. & Ward, L. G. (2005). The Handbook of Pragmatics. Wiley-Blackwell.
