The aim of the course is to enable students to analyze texts coming from various areas of the Anglophone world (United Kingdom, USA, Australia, Canada, Ireland, India and Nigeria), applying critical methodologies that include textual analysis, cultural and text linguistics and stylistics.

Texts are written or spoken discourse, but any cultural artefact – a picture, a building, a piece of music – can be seen as a text. The course considers the co-presence of other semiotic forms with language in texts, in order to show the complexity of contemporary Anglophone culture;  students are invited to reflect and elaborate on the constitutive properties of discourse and texts, on linguistic and stylistic aspects as well as on such issues as identity, power, gender and ethnicity.

After a general overview of the contemporary Anglophone world, with a brief historical account of the colonial and postcolonial processes that have given rise to the linguistic and cultural diversity of the English-speaking countries, the course mainly focuses on:

1) The presentation of text linguistics and its main theoretical characteristics.

2) The presentation of stylistics and its main features.

3) The analysis of the texts in programme, that range from newspapers and magazines to academic writing, narrative, poetry, and audiovisual material.

4) Discussion of the texts in class: the students are asked to actively participate in order to better understand the practical application of the theories and prepare for the course final assessment.

At the end of the course, the students will have acquired analytical abilities and a good working knowledge of textual analysis. They will be asked to apply those abilities and that knowledge to various text genres. They will be expected to be able to form independent judgments in their analyses, and to expound the same both in written and in spoken form. More specifically:

Knowledge and understanding: at the end of the course, the students will be required to show extensive knowledge of the above linguistic theories.

Applying knowledge and understanding: the students must be able to apply their knowledge of these theories to the analysis of various textual genres.

Making judgements: the students must acquire the ability to make decisions on the best analytical strategies for each text they have to deal with.

Communication skills: at the end of the course, the students must be able to conduct their analyses in terminologically adequate English (written/spoken), at the level required by the course.

The teaching material prepared by the lecturer in addition to recommended textbooks (such as for instance slides, lecture notes, exercises, bibliography) and communications from the lecturer specific to the course can be found inside the Moodle platform › blended.uniurb.it

See the blended learning platform

Teaching

See course books.

Attendance

Attendance is highly recommended, in order to actively participate to discussions and analyses in class.

Course books

R. De Beaugrande, W. Dressler, Introduction to Text Linguistics, Longman, London and New York, 1981 (selected chapters)

Geoffrey Leech and Mick Short, Style in Fiction, Pearson Education Limited, 1981 (selected chapters)

Jennifer Jenkins, World Englishes. A resource book for students, Routledge, 2003 (selected chapters)

Assessment

Written test: guided textual analysis of a text. Use of monolingual dictionaries is allowed. The final assessment will be based not only on the validity of the analysis, but also on methodological relevance (references to the course books) and on the student's argumentative abilities in English. In practice, in their written tests, the students will have to demonstrate notions in the field of linguistic theory, to apply these notions to their analysis, to exercise their own judgement in their analytical choices, and to show a good command of written English (at the level required by the course).

Disability and Specific Learning Disorders (SLD)

Students who have registered their disability certification or SLD certification with the Inclusion and Right to Study Office can request to use conceptual maps (for keywords) during exams.

To this end, it is necessary to send the maps, two weeks before the exam date, to the course instructor, who will verify their compliance with the university guidelines and may request modifications.

Teaching

See course books.

Course books

De Beaugrande, Dressler, Introduction to Text Linguistics, Longman, London and New York, 1981 (selected chapters)

N. Fairclough, Critical Discourse Analysis, Essex, Longman, 1995 (selected chapters)

J. Jenkins, World Englishes, London and New York, Routledge, 2009 (selected chapters)

F. Sharifian, Cultural Linguistics, John Benjamins Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 2017 (selected chapters)

Assessment

Written test: guided textual analysis of a text. Use of monolingual dictionaries is allowed. The final assessment will be based not only on the validity of the analysis, but also on methodological relevance (references to the course books) and on the student's argumentative abilities in English. In practice, in their written tests, the students will have to demonstrate notions in the field of linguistic theory, to apply these notions to their analysis, to exercise their own judgement in their analytical choices, and to show a good command of written English (at the level required by the course).

Disability and Specific Learning Disorders (SLD)

Students who have registered their disability certification or SLD certification with the Inclusion and Right to Study Office can request to use conceptual maps (for keywords) during exams.

To this end, it is necessary to send the maps, two weeks before the exam date, to the course instructor, who will verify their compliance with the university guidelines and may request modifications.