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| Semester | spring semester 2019 |
| Course frequency | Irregular |
| Lecturers | Andreas Langlotz (andreas.langlotz@unibas.ch, Assessor) |
| Content | Language use is not neutral. Whenever we speak and write, we describe our world of experience (including the inner world of personal experience and the social world of engaging with others) from a particular vantage point. For example, the sentences in (1)-(4) conceptualise a basic process in a restaurant kitchen from different perspectives such as distant vs. close (1 vs. 4), personal vs. impersonal (2 vs. 3) or abstract vs. specific (3 vs. 4): 1) Kitchen staff are preparing the meal. 2) "I must chop the onions", the aide said. 3) Vegetables are being cut. 4) The knife is sliding through the layers of the onion bulb. When addressing such constellations, language users also adopt different stances towards the content of their utterances. For instance, they may modify the meaning of a statement through deontic (2) or epistemic (5) modality. Or they may express their emotional evaluation of a state of affairs (6): 5) Italian onions would have different flavours. 6) Wow, Italian onions, I mean they taste really, really great! In this seminar, we will scrutinize the linguistic as well as some non-verbal means to play with perspective and stance. Approaching these phenomena from a cognitive-linguistic and from a conversation-analytical angle, we are interested in how language and other communicative modalities guide and manipulate our perception, comprehension, and interpretation of the world of experience. To do so, we will look at a great variety of different linguistic data including face-to-face interactions, fictional texts (novels and short stories), newspaper articles, and (political) speeches. |
| Learning objectives | After this seminar students will - know the linguistic dimensions of perspective and stance. - be able to detect, distinguish, and analyse different linguistic and non-verbal means to modulate perspective and stance in different forms of language use. - have developed a critical attitude towards the potentially manipulative employment of stance and perspective in public and political discourse. |
| Bibliography | will be made available on ADAM. |
| Weblink | ADAM |
| Admission requirements | Successfully completed BA |
| Course application | In order to ensure a good learning environment, we aim at no more than 20 students per class (2 sections). We ask you to register via the following doodle link and recommend that you create a doodle account https://doodle.com/poll/d8wrttm2dfhyvgmm. You may only register TWICE: once for a class section and once for a waiting list. Multiple voting (more than twice) will be removed and you will be assigned a place in a class with free seats after registration has closed. Should you not have made it into one of the courses and you are only able to register for the waiting lists, we guarantee that we will take you in the course with the least student numbers. The doodle will close on February 11 in order to finalise student distribution in the week before term start. |
| Language of instruction | English |
| Use of digital media | Online, mandatory |
| Interval | Weekday | Time | Room |
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No dates available. Please contact the lecturer.
| Modules |
Doktorat Iberoromanische Sprachwissenschaft: Empfehlungen (PhD subject: Ibero-Romance Linguistics) Doktorat Sprachwissenschaft des Englischen: Empfehlungen (PhD subject: English Linguistics) French Linguistics: Recommendations (PhD subject: French Linguistics) Modul: English Linguistics (Master's degree subject: English) Modul: Forschungspraxis und Vertiefung (Master's degree program: Language and Communication) Modul: Research in English Linguistics (Master's degree subject: English) Modul: Sprache als Prozess (Master's degree program: Language and Communication) |
| Assessment format | continuous assessment |
| Assessment details | Oral presentation and short written assignment (1000-1500 words) |
| Assessment registration/deregistration | Reg.: course registration; dereg.: not required |
| Repeat examination | no repeat examination |
| Scale | Pass / Fail |
| Repeated registration | as often as necessary |
| Responsible faculty | Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, studadmin-philhist@unibas.ch |
| Offered by | Fachbereich Englische Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft |