Critical Discourse, Culture and Communication – (M.A.)

Contents

Students on this MA programme take six taught 20 credit modules: the first three modules in the September–December term; the second three modules in the January–March term. Students also write a 12,000-word dissertation (from April to September).
All students take a short non-assessed course 'Introduction to the Bank of English', which introduces them to the 400 million word Bank of English Corpus, an invaluable collection of authentic language data for critical analysis against which theory, intuition and pedagogic materials can be measured. In addition, there is a course in Academic Writing, specifically for those students who have not previously been educated through the medium of English.
Modules are as follows:

* Critical Discourse Culture and Communication - This module covers aspects of how spoken and written discourse is organised, how it varies, and how it may be described and analysed. There is a strong focus on issues of culture and communication and on the critical interpretation of texts.
* Optional 20 credit module - Choose from Describing Language; Introduction to Translation Research; Introduction to Lexicography, Introduction to
Corpus Linguistics.
* Social and Multimodal Aspects of Communication - This module aims to provide an overview of the major issues in the area of Sociolinguistics and Multimodal Communication, with particular reference to new theories that takes into consideration a diversity of communicative modes – language, image, music, sound texture and gesture. The perspective taken in this course assumes that communication always happens in a social context and it is always multimodal. The first part of the course will discuss the main theoretical approaches to language placed in the social world. The second part will explore new ways of understanding and analysing multimodal communication.
* Research Methods in Applied Linguistics - This module includes a course in methods and approaches to research in Applied Linguistics. In addition, students select one option from the range on offer and apply what they have learned to a small research project.
* Intercultural Communication - The aim of this course is to provide an overview of the major issues in the area of Intercultural Communication, with particular reference to developments in the last 20 years. In today's global world, it is necessary to communicate successfully across cultural boundaries of languages, styles and values. This module will address these questions, using participants' cultural background as the basis for contrastive analysis in terms of language difference, pragmatics, social semiotics and visual communication.
* Optional 20-credit module - Students select one option from the range on offer. You may also if you wish sit in on another option without being assessed in it. The teaching of specific options will depend, to some extent, upon staff availability and levels of student interest (for example, it would not be viable to run an option for just one student), but options would commonly include:

* Bilingual Dictionaries and Terminology
* Business English
* Computer Assisted Language Learning
* Corpus Linguistics
* Discourse for Teachers
* English as a Global Language
* English for Specific/Academic Purposes
* Forensic Linguistics
* Genre Analysis
* Language and Literature
* Management of Innovation
* Media Literacy
* Teacher Training