Psychological Sciences and Techniques

The general aim of the course is the learning of theoretical and methodological knowldge on language and discourse, taken as vehicles of cultural and examined in natural contexts socialization (family, educational contexts). The course, articulated in 6 CFU , privileges the perspective of ethnopragmatics (Duranti, 2007), with particular regard to the ways in which the communicative context influences language, the selection of lexicon, utterances and texts and how language influences context, shaping interlocutors’ beliefs and actions . The course also focuses on the ethnographic approach of Language Socialization, devoting a particular attention to the study of participation in discourse by children, and the relationship between participation and the development of social and cultural competence in different activity contexts. The course offers methodological tools in the analysis of utterances and discourse as social practice, and tools for the observation and analysis of discoursive interactios such as video –observation, transcriptions of conversations, Conversation Analysis of interactional exchanges in both ordinary and educational contexts. At the end of the course the student will acquire different perspectives in the study of the acquisition and socialization to language and communication, useful to distinguish different forms of communication and social participation of children and adults to communicative exchanges. For the students, passing the exam would mean: learning and identifying different aspects of language and communication within the pragmatic perspective, knowding the main theories in language socialization and the relationship between socialization processes, culture and discourse; knowing and understanding the methodological qualitative tools to observe and analyze the characteristics of language and communicative processes in different contexts (Descriptor 1 : Knowledge and understanding); 2) to apply the epistemological principles of pragmatic, cultural and interactionist perspectives to the main dimensions of communicative processes in different natural, formative and educational contexts; to apply, reflexively, methods and tools of pragmatic analysis of texts and discourses; to analyze different participation frameworks, and their relationships with linguistic and discoursive competence (II Descriptor: Applying knowledge and understanding); 3) to develop critical judgment and interpretive skills to analyze video data and transcriptions of interactions in different activities and communicative contexts, by means of (individual and group) activities that will include the collection and the analysis of research data, and the writing of research reports and their collective discussion (III Descriptor: Making judgments); 4) to develop skills as regards the communication of empirical results of observation and analytical interpretation about the pragmatic dimensions of texts and discourses, by means of group presentations of data and observations in the classroom, group discussions of data and analyses , and the writing of analytical reports regarding collected data, which will be assessed during the course (IV Descriptor: Communication skills); 5) saper proseguire in modo autonomo nell’acquisizione e nell’approfondimento di conoscenze teoriche, metodologiche e applicative utili allo studio dello sviluppo di competenze linguistiche e dei processi comunicativi (V Indicatore Capacità di apprendimento) 5) to develop skills in autonomous learning and the detailed study of theoretical methodological and applied knowledge usable to the study of the characteristics and the acquisition of language and communicative competence (V Descriptor: Lifelong learning skills)