80-283 It Matters How You Say It

9 units, Carnegie Mellon University

Why do languages give us multiple ways to say the same thing Given that in English we can say My dog ate my homework, why do we sometimes prefer My homework got eaten by my dog Why do we sometimes choose to refer to someone with just a pronoun he, and sometimes choose their full name Charles Dickens Whats the difference between telling someone This expensive coffee is tasteless, or telling them This tasteless coffee was expensive This course is about the choices that languages give us for conveying a particular message, and the communicative effects of those choices. We will see that it is both the words you use and the way you put them together that determines the total communicative effect of your utterance. While the course will focus on English, students will have an opportunity to work on another language of interest in their final project.

Prerequisites: none listed

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