Lehrende/r: PD Dr. habil. Martina Lampert
Veranstaltungsart: Seminar
Anzeige im Stundenplan: S: Eng.Linguistics
Semesterwochenstunden: 2
Unterrichtssprache: Englisch
Min. | Max. Teilnehmerzahl: - | 30
Anmeldegruppe: Seminar: English Linguistics
Prioritätsschema: Senatsrichtlinie zzgl. Bevorzugung höherer Fachsemester Zulassung gemäß Richtlinie über den Zugang zu teilnahmebeschränkten Lehrveranstaltungen vom 07. März 2007. Nähere Informationen hierzu entnehmen Sie bitte www.info.jogustine.uni-mainz.de/senatsrichtlinieÜber die Senatsrichtlinie hinaus werden bei der Platzvergabe für diese Veranstaltung Studierende höherer Fachsemester bevorzugt berücksichtigt.
Voraussetzungen / Organisatorisches: To obtain credit, participants are required to carry out their own small-scale (group) research project on a selected aspect of punctuation in English, e.g., do a survey with test persons, a text-based analysis, or a corpus study, and present their initial findings (via PowerPoint or poster) in class, which will then be their exploratory work for their term papers. Details of organization and additional information will be available during the first meeting; study material will be available for individual download in pdf format.
Inhalt: There is a widespread assumption, not only among laypersons, that the linguistic structure of written language is qualitatively identical to that of spoken language: From an informed linguistic point of view, however, it should no longer be necessary to defend the view that written language is a true and independent variety of (a) language with its own set of functions and conventions following from the options and constraints of the visual medium. It may, nevertheless, be surprising to observe that punctuation marks--in English, at least--are highly systematic and, even more, that they are essentially functional in conveying meaning. Analyzed in its own terms, punctuation manifests a coherent linguistic subsystem of text-grammar, i.e., it is far more than ‘just’ a matter of sentence structure. This highly systematic and interrelated ensemble of text-syntactic and presentational rules, then, deserves special attention from both native and non-native writers who aim at a solid command and/or proficiency in all varieties of writing. The seminar will first scrutinize the inventory of the punctuation marks available in English, from well-known members like commas and periods/full stops to those (nowadays) less known like semi-colons, parentheses, and dashes. We will then trace the functionality of punctuation options and their discriminating potential across a cross section of texts as well as take a closer look at practical issues for the EFL classroom.
