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79357-01 - Seminar: English in Pop Culture (3 KP)
| Semester | Herbstsemester 2026 |
| Angebotsmuster | unregelmässig |
| Dozierende | Thomas Messerli (thomas.messerli@unibas.ch, BeurteilerIn) |
| Inhalt | Pop culture is one of the most visible arenas in which English circulates globally, and it provides rich material for the study of language in context. Song lyrics, films and TV series, video games, fan fiction, stand-up comedy, and online fan communities all use English in distinctive ways: to construct characters, voice identities, stage emotion, build worlds, address audiences, and negotiate cultural belonging. In this seminar, we treat pop-cultural texts and practices as legitimate objects of linguistic inquiry and explore what they can tell us about English as a contemporary, mediated, and globalised language. The seminar adopts a pragmatic perspective on pop culture and works closely with corpus pragmatic and discourse analytic methods. Across the semester we revisit core concepts from pragmatics – including speech acts, im/politeness, stance, indexicality, and participation – and apply them to a range of pop-cultural data. Particular attention is paid to participation structures and to the layered communicative arrangements typical of mediated and pop-cultural discourse, where authors, performers, characters, narrators, audiences, and online communities address each other in complex ways. We further consider how implicit meaning, irony, and intertextuality are constructed in scripted and mediated language, and how pop-cultural genres travel across linguistic and cultural settings. The sessions are anchored in empirical work and draw on data and analyses presented in the published research we read for the seminar. Across the semester we will engage with examples and datasets from a range of pop-cultural domains, including gaming, song lyrics, film and television, fan fiction, and online fan discussion, and we will see how different studies have approached such material from corpus pragmatic and discourse analytic perspectives. Sessions combine theoretical input with hands-on analytical work on selected examples, so that students gain a feel for the methodological choices behind the studies we discuss and for the interpretive challenges of working with mediated language. In addition to the shared course reading, students will engage with further texts of their own, on which they will present in class, contributing additional perspectives and material to the discussion. By the end of the seminar, students will be able to apply pragmatic and discourse analytic frameworks to pop-cultural texts and practices and to develop their own informed analyses of how English is used across pop-cultural domains. |
| Lernziele | By the end of the course, students will have engaged with key theoretical and methodological approaches in linguistic pragmatics and discourse analysis, and they will have applied these to the analysis of pop-cultural texts and practices. They will have explored how English is used in gaming, song lyrics, film and TV, fan fiction, and online fan communities, and they will have developed a more in-depth understanding of participation structures, multimodality, and meaning-making in pop-cultural discourse. Through close analysis of authentic data, students will have practised connecting theoretical concepts to concrete examples, comparing pragmatic phenomena across genres, and reflecting on the methodological challenges of working with mediated and pop-cultural material. Students will have presented their analyses, contributed to in-class discussion, and produced a short piece of analytical writing. |
| Literatur | All obligatory reading for the course will be made available on ADAM. |
| Weblink | ADAM |
| Teilnahmevoraussetzungen | This course is open to students of English who have passed all three BA introductory modules and to MA students of English and MSG Sprache und Kommunikation. |
| Anmeldung zur Lehrveranstaltung | Please register for this course on services unibas. In order to ensure a good learning environment, we aim at no more than 20 students per linguistics seminar. We ask you to sign up for classes via the ADAM registration surveys, which will open on 1 August 2026, 10am (CEST), and close on 18 September 2026, 2pm (CEST): https://adam.unibas.ch/goto_adam_crs_1623802.html **Please only register for a maximum of TWO seminars and only for more than one if you really intend to take both courses.** Should you have not made it into one of the courses and you are only able to register on the list in a position higher than 20, we guarantee that we will take you in the course with the least student numbers. |
| Unterrichtssprache | Englisch |
| Einsatz digitaler Medien | Online-Angebot obligatorisch |
| Intervall | Wochentag | Zeit | Raum |
|---|---|---|---|
| wöchentlich | Dienstag | 14.15-16.00 | Nadelberg 6, Raum 11 |
Einzeltermine
| Datum | Zeit | Raum |
|---|---|---|
| Dienstag 15.09.2026 | 14.15-16.00 Uhr | Nadelberg 6, Raum 11 |
| Dienstag 22.09.2026 | 14.15-16.00 Uhr | Nadelberg 6, Raum 11 |
| Dienstag 29.09.2026 | 14.15-16.00 Uhr | Nadelberg 6, Raum 11 |
| Dienstag 06.10.2026 | 14.15-16.00 Uhr | Nadelberg 6, Raum 11 |
| Dienstag 13.10.2026 | 14.15-16.00 Uhr | Nadelberg 6, Raum 11 |
| Dienstag 20.10.2026 | 14.15-16.00 Uhr | Nadelberg 6, Raum 11 |
| Dienstag 27.10.2026 | 14.15-16.00 Uhr | Nadelberg 6, Raum 11 |
| Dienstag 03.11.2026 | 14.15-16.00 Uhr | Nadelberg 6, Raum 11 |
| Dienstag 10.11.2026 | 14.15-16.00 Uhr | Nadelberg 6, Raum 11 |
| Dienstag 17.11.2026 | 14.15-16.00 Uhr | Nadelberg 6, Raum 11 |
| Dienstag 24.11.2026 | 14.15-16.00 Uhr | Nadelberg 6, Raum 11 |
| Dienstag 01.12.2026 | 14.15-16.00 Uhr | Nadelberg 6, Raum 11 |
| Dienstag 08.12.2026 | 14.15-16.00 Uhr | Nadelberg 6, Raum 11 |
| Dienstag 15.12.2026 | 14.15-16.00 Uhr | Nadelberg 6, Raum 11 |
| Module |
Modul: Advanced English Linguistics (Bachelor Studienfach: Englisch) Modul: English Linguistics (Master Studienfach: Englisch) Modul: Forschungspraxis und Vertiefung (Master Studiengang: Sprache und Kommunikation) Modul: Sprache und Gesellschaft (Master Studiengang: Sprache und Kommunikation) |
| Prüfung | Lehrveranst.-begleitend |
| Hinweise zur Prüfung | regular and active participation; preparatory reading; oral presentation plus handout; short written task in connection with the presentation (around 1’500 words) |
| An-/Abmeldung zur Prüfung | Anmelden: Belegen; Abmelden: nicht erforderlich |
| Wiederholungsprüfung | keine Wiederholungsprüfung |
| Skala | Pass / Fail |
| Belegen bei Nichtbestehen | beliebig wiederholbar |
| Zuständige Fakultät | Philosophisch-Historische Fakultät, studadmin-philhist@unibas.ch |
| Anbietende Organisationseinheit | Fachbereich Englische Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft |