Discourse Analysis

This course provides a comprehensive, albeit condensed introduction to Discourse Studies with a special focus given to the Discourse-Historical Approach to Critical Discourse Studies. Other theoretical frameworks such as rhetoric, argumentation, pragmatics, ethnography, media studies and political science as well as multimodal discourse analysis are included with reference to a range of genres such as newspaper reporting, political speeches, debates and adverts. Central discourse-analytical concepts such as ‘discourse’, ‘context’, ‘critique’, ‘intertextuality’, and ‘corpus’ will be considered in detail. The course will also introduce methods of data elicitation and collection as well as methods of analysis. Students will be asked to choose a topic for a small project, which may be completed individually or in a small group. A list of suggestions will be published, but topics can and should be developed beyond these suggestions. These research projects will be reported in term papers of 2500-3000 words. Readings will be provided on Moodle. Small writing assignments for each content block (the asynchronous sessions) will also be on Moodle (instructions and submission).