Subject Sementics

📘 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

1. Burton-Roberts, N. (2007). Pragmatics. Palgrave Macmillan.
2. Cruse, A. (2011). Meaning in Language: An Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics. Oxford.
3. Cutting, J. (2002). Pragmatics and Discourse: A Resource Book for Students. Routledge.
4. Davis, S. & Gillon, S. B. (2004). Semantics: A Reader. Oxford University Press.
5. Davis, S. (1991). Pragmatics: A Reader. Oxford University Press.
6. Frawley, W. (2002). Linguistic Semantics. Cambridge University Press.
7. Griffiths, P. (2006). An Introduction to English Semantics and Pragmatics. Edinburgh University Press.
8. Grundy, P. (2000). Doing Pragmatics. Arnold.
9. Howard, G. (2000). Semantics: Language Workbooks. Routledge.
10. Hurford, R. J., Heasley, B. & Smith, B. M. (2007). Semantics: A Course Book. Cambridge University Press.
11. Kearns, K. (2000). Semantics. Palgrave Modern Linguistics.
12. Lyons, J. (1996). Linguistic Semantics: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press.
13. Riemer, N. (2010). Introducing Semantics. Cambridge University Press.
14. Saeed, I. J. (2009). Semantics. Wiley-Blackwell.
15. Horn, R. L. & Ward, L. G. (2005). The Handbook of Pragmatics. Wiley-Blackwell.