1490.19 - Cultural and Social Influence on Language. (MA)

1490.19

Cultural and Social Influence on Language. (MA)

10

Students must have completed the required core components of the BA in Faroese or other equivalent preconditions. This course can also be taken as an individual course with other prerequisites (please refer to the academic programme in force).

The aim is that the student gets insight into and learns to independently evaluate, interpret, and describe usage from a linguistic, cultural and social identity point of view.

Based on theories regarding sociolinguistics and usage various oral and written texts will be analysed from different theoretical perspectives. That includes e.g. thoeries about the notion of positive and negative face, politeness, in/directness, and discourse analysis. Some of the examples analysed will be about compliments, requests, and apologies, speaking your native language compared to speaking a foreign language, conversations between family members and/or friends.

The course is organized as a self-tuition course and corresponds to 3 hours a week for one semester.

Successful students have a the end of the course: • Got solid theoretical knowledge of language diversity within certain domains like those already mentioned concerning face, politeness, directness, and discourse analysis. • Got an insight into the differences between usage of those speaking their native language and those speaking their second language or a foreign language. • Got competence to independently and critically use the tools to analyse how language is used to perform and behave. • Got some exercises in reflecting upon different language features and how they may reflect social variables. • Learnt how to connect analysed texts to theories studied. • Learnt to think and reflect critically on methods and different theories. • Learnt to use the scientific terms that belong to the subject. • Got an understanding of language diversity from a cultural and social point of view.

6-hour written examination.

External

7-

Spencer-Oatey, Helen. 2008. Culturally Speaking Culture, Communication and Politeness Theory. Cornwall:Continuum. Trosborg, Anna. 1995. Interlanguage Pragmatics. Requests, Complaints and Apologies. Berlin. Mouton de Gruyter. In addition theoretical articles will be read, some of them on critics of methods. Articles with examples of linguistic diversity from a social and cultural point of view are also part of curriculum. Curriculum: In total 800 standard pages of theoretical texts on usage and an appropriate number of pages with various kinds of examples of different texts.

Zakaris Svabo Hansen