Discourse

Published: Thursday, 06 August 2015 09:42

A discipline "Discourse" is for first-year students (2 semester) of a master’s program. It is studied for 72 hours (2 credit units). It equals 2 ECTS. While mastering the given discipline students are to take an exam.

Course Description:

Discourse studies draws on the theories and methods of rhetoric, linguistics, cultural studies, and literary studies in investigating the operation of discourse across genres, cultural contexts, modalities, and historical moments. Students in the Discourse Studies course explore the ways in which discourses—the systems of thought and language that shape how people experience and talk about the world—are both displayed and created in actual instances of discourse.

Discourse Studies emphasizes language as a tool for communication and action in professional and social contexts. Discourse Studies takes a “multi-modal” approach, examining how written, spoken and visual modes of communication interact in workplace and academic settings, as well as in the media and social networking.The main area of interest of this master's program is first, to foster research and train experts in the development and application of theories, methods and practices related to the study of language in social communication and learning contexts; and second, to contribute to academic specialization in the various areas of application of discourse studies.

Aims:

The learning goals for this course are:

• Apply the main theories and approaches of discourse studies to the various disciplines of the humanities and social sciences.
• Analyze the units, categories, levels and other grammatical (phonological, syntactic, semantic), pragmatic, rhetorical, semiotic and stylistic structures and superstructures of the main oral, written and multimodal genres of discourse as forms of language use, communication and interaction.
• Interpret the main forms and functions of communication in society and their effects on knowledge, attitudes, ideologies, standards and public values.

Think critically about the role of discourse and communication in the (re)production of different forms of inequality and domination in contemporary society.