This course focuses on how we use language in our communication with other people and how they communicate with us using many different types of spoken, written, illustrated and electronically mediated texts in many different settings and situations. We will look at how language is related to our social identities. power, and membership in different groups, why people don't always say what they mean and how we can understand the hidden meanings in texts, how different kinds of texts are put together, and the special ways language is used in educational and professional settings. All of these different issues will be approached through looking at actual language from your own lives through both interactive classroom activities and 'fieldwork' in which you will collect samples of communication in different contexts for analysis.

Course Aims:

• To explore how we use languages in our communication with other people and how they communicate with us through different types of spoken, written, illustrated and mediated texts in many different settings and encounters in contemporary society;
• To demonstrate and explain how in our everyday and professional lives in a multilingual society we shape meaning, and how meanings shape us; and
• To develop students' communicative abilities in English and, in particular, to enhance their personal abilities at critical enquiry.

Intended Learning Outcomes:

Upon completing this course, students should be able to

§         Explain the complex interplay between language, thought and representation, language and power, and language and identity, and language and culture.

§         Apply the concepts they have learned to the analysis of a variety of written, verbal, graphic and multi-modal texts.

§         Recognize the strategies used in propaganda and persuasive texts and the underlying ideologies which these texts promote

§         Evaluate the strategies used in episodes of actual communication and make recommendations on how they could be more effective.