Course title: Discourse analysis – language of communication technologies
Name of course coordinator: Prof. Milena Žic Fuchs
Name of lecturer: Asst. Prof. Marina Grubišić
Number of credits: 5
Language of instruction: English
Semester: 2nd (spring)
Status: elective
Type of course: 2 periods, seminar
Prerequisites: All basic linguistics disciplines
Assessment method: Individually or in small groups, students write a seminar paper (about 20 pages)
Course contents: At the beginning of the seminar students are introduced to various phenomena on the suprasentential level, or text. The elements discussed are those that influence the basic characteristics of text, particularly the extratextual ones such as context of situation, context of culture, Gricean maxims, sender, receiver, as well as intratextual elements, those belonging to the category of text cohesion. Further, texts from the domain of communication technologies are analyzed with an aim to examine to what extent the traditional discourse analysis is able to explain the phenomena arising in the new modes of communication. ‘Written’ and ‘spoken’ texts are compared in order to point out the differences found in the language of communication technologies. Examples are analyzed from both English and Croatian to observe cultural differences.
Objectives of the course: The objective of this seminar is to introduce students to the basic notions of text analysis, i.e. the suprasentential level. Theoretical knowledge is applied to the specific characteristics of texts found in communication technologies. The analysis of these texts enables an insight into the creation of new communication rules and rituals.
Obavezatna literatura:
Brown, G. i Yule, G. (1983), Discourse Analysis. Cambridge University Press.
Crystal, D. (2000), Language and the Internet. Cambridge University Press.
Levinson, Stephen C. (1983), Pragmatics. Cambridge University Press
Recommended reading (optional):
Searle, John R. (1969), Speech Acts – An Essay in the Philosophy of Language, Cambridge University Press
Austin, J. L. (1962), How to do Things with Words, Oxford University Press
