This course focuses on the cognitive aspect of language and language learning. It introduces how people use linguistic structures to produce and construe meaning by providing an outline of the central concepts of cognitive linguistics (CL) and pragmatics. CL describes linguistic patterns on the basis of general cognitive processes of knowledge formation; it thus offers an interesting model of how our use of words and syntactic patterns is derived from basic experiences and concepts. Pragmatics focuses more closely on the dynamic and context-specific construction of meaning in language use. The course sketches various areas of CL and pragmatics. Initially it provides you with the corresponding theoretical apparatus as well as some basic methods of analysis. You will then learn to apply this knowledge to the analysis of concrete linguistic data and language didactics.