1412.14 - Semiotics (MA)

1412.14

Semiotics (MA)

10

Students are required to have completed a BA in Faroese or have equivalent qualifications.

To provide students with a general foundation in semiotics and specific insight into Faroese semiotics. The course aims to teach students to identify, understand and use semiotics, i.e. afford insight into metalinguistic structures, how knowledge about the world is presented, in other words, how it is classified, grouped etc. before it exists as language. To provide students with insight into the specialist terminology of the field.

Recognising that language to a large extent is semiotic, the course will revise theory on the subject and examine live Faroese language in order to gain insight into the importance of semiotics. The course describes how the world is classified subconsciously, how such classification turns into concepts and schemata and, then, how concepts and schemata appear in language as semiotics. Part of the course offers a foundation in the origin of the concept schemata and how it is analogue to concepts in theory of science.

Duration: three hours a week for the spring semester of 2014. The main approaches are lectures and student presentations. In addition, the course alternates between group discussions and joint discussions on specific set questions.

Students who complete the course are expected to have acquired in-depth theoretical and practical knowledge about semiotics. Successful students can demonstrate the ability to: • analyse discourse based on semiotic theory • explain the concept of metaphors and assess them • indicate the structures that are active in language • use field-specific terminology

A three-week set take-home assignment (15-20 pages) on a topic represented in the bibliography submitted by the student.

External

Jógvan í Lon Jacobsen