Course for international guest/part time students
- Faculty
- Faculty of Humanities
- Organization
- BTK Department of English Language Pedagogy
- Code
- BMI-ANGD17-CK7bE.03
- Title
- Intercultural Studies: Exploring Culture - Theory and Analysis: Discourse and Culture
- Usual semester
- Autumn
- ECTS
- 6
- Language
- Learning outcomes
- Course contents and aims: In second/foreign language discourse production it often happens that a grammatically or lexically well formed piece of discourse “does not read/sound well”, and one can immediately tell that it has not been produced by a native speaker. Research has shown that this “strangeness” may be the result of certain, so called “discourse-level” phenomena. This course intends to familiarize students with aspects of language and culture that may influence discourse production and, ultimately, the nature and success of intercultural communication. Special emphasis will be placed on issues related to the creation of cohesion and coherence in text, the rhetorical organization of genres and text types, logical structuring in different languages and cultures. The course merges theory with practice: it raises students’ awareness of discourse-level phenomena through theory and also provides them with practice in original (L1), foreign language and translational text analysis so that they obtain the skills necessary for conducting discourse-based investigations. The practical implications of discourse analysis in the field of intercultural communication, language learning/teaching, translation and translator training will also be discussed. The course hopes to make participants more conscious language users who are capable of producing communicatively and rhetorically adequate English language discourse.
- Course content
- Course contents and aims: In second/foreign language discourse production it often happens that a grammatically or lexically well formed piece of discourse “does not read/sound well”, and one can immediately tell that it has not been produced by a native speaker. Research has shown that this “strangeness” may be the result of certain, so called “discourse-level” phenomena. This course intends to familiarize students with aspects of language and culture that may influence discourse production and, ultimately, the nature and success of intercultural communication. Special emphasis will be placed on issues related to the creation of cohesion and coherence in text, the rhetorical organization of genres and text types, logical structuring in different languages and cultures. The course merges theory with practice: it raises students’ awareness of discourse-level phenomena through theory and also provides them with practice in original (L1), foreign language and translational text analysis so that they obtain the skills necessary for conducting discourse-based investigations. The practical implications of discourse analysis in the field of intercultural communication, language learning/teaching, translation and translator training will also be discussed. The course hopes to make participants more conscious language users who are capable of producing communicatively and rhetorically adequate English language discourse.
- Assessment method
- Requirements: (1) regular attendance and active participation, (2) preparing a presentation on one of the readings, (3) conducting in-class analyses of texts, (4) completion of home assignments and home readings, (5) a seminar paper. Assessment: The final grade for the course will be calculated on the basis of the quality of the presentation, the text analyses, the seminar paper and class participation.
- Bibliography
- Beaugrande, R. de, & Dressler, W. U. (1981). Introduction to text linguistics. London: Longman. Chapters 1 and 2 (pp. 1-29). Connor, U. (1996). Contrastive rhetoric. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chapter 2 ( pp. 28-55). Furka, I. (2008). The Curriculum Vitae and the motivational letter: A rhetorical and cultural analysis. Working Papers in Language Pedagogy, 2, 18-37. Halliday, M. A. K. (1985). An introduction to functional grammar. London: Edward Arnold. (pp. 287-309, 310-318). Hasan, R. (1984). Coherence and cohesive harmony. In J. Flood (ed.), Understanding reading comprehension (pp. 181-219). Delaware: International Reading Association. Kaplan, R. B. (1966). Cultural thought patterns in intercultural education. Language Learning, 16, 1-20. Károly, K. (2007). Szövegtan és fordítás. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó. (selected chapters). Mann, W. C., & Thompson, S. A. (1988). Rhetorical structure theory: toward a functional theory of text organization. Text, 8(3), 243-281. Swales, J. M. (1990). Genre analysis. English in academic and research settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chapter 7.4: Introductions (pp. 137-166).