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Lehrende/r: PD Dr. habil. Martina Lampert
Veranstaltungsart:
online: Seminar
Anzeige im Stundenplan:
05.008.200
Semesterwochenstunden:
2
Credits:
8,0
Unterrichtssprache:
Englisch
Min. | Max. Teilnehmerzahl:
- | 30
Anmeldegruppe: Engl. Ling. 200
Voraussetzungen / Organisatorisches:
This seminar will promote students’ academic skills in linguistics and expand their analytical competence for a successful self-determined engagement with pervasive issues in language and communication during their further studies. At the same time, it is organized in a fashion that will guarantee maximum opportunity for individual support, and it allows for topics to be tailored to each course member’s personal interest.
Inhalt:
In this bachelor seminar, we will be engaged with an analysis of what in most general terms may be referred to as discourse; that is, our objects of study will be any meaningful exemplar of communicative behavior in its natural context, be it (written) text or (spoken) talk in English. And we will proceed from a multimodal perspective, which means that we will be taking seriously the fact that we never exclusively communicate via the medium of language alone; sometimes, for sure, the verbal ‘code’ dominates, sometimes, however, it is less prominent or even absent. But always—and necessarily so—more modes (or: resources) of expression than just (sequences of) words are critically involved: In short, (not only) human communication is essentially multimodal.
And though multimodality as a research perspective has its roots in Conversation and Discourse Analysis and starts from the assumption that an(y) act of speaking will always feature multiple resources of communication (verbal, vocal, and gestural modes of expression), writing is also essentially multimodal, using, e.g., different fonts, page layouts, colors, images etc.
To illustrate the spoken specimen first, here is a visual representation (in the form of a simplified orthographic transcript) of what originally was an authentic oral exchange between co-present interlocutors:
Well, we went to, we went to San Francisco because I remember, uh, uh, oh, what the heck’s the name of that hotel we stayed? Big hotel. Mm. Oh, anyway, uh, but we just stayed there a couple of nights and that’s all, and then we took the bus back, of course.
Beginning with what has been actually ‘said,’ even a cursory glance will reveal diverse phenomena that ‘flood’ any normal conversation—prominently among them so-called discourse markers (well), repeats (we went to, we went to), hesitations and pauses (uh, uh, oh), restarts (oh, anyway). Face-to-face interactions also include regular responses from the conversation partner(s), such as back-channeling (mm), among many other phenomena that testify to the presence of interlocutors. In addition, we encounter abandoned utterances (because I remember) or ‘stand alone’ sequences (e.g., Big hotel.) that do not at all conform to what we would consider as ‘regular’ (or well-formed grammatical) clause or sentence format.
And apart from this verbal message, speakers regularly engage in diverse additional activities that draw on various visual devices (which are missing from the transcript anyway), such as establishing and maintaining eye-contact with their conversational partners or shifting their gaze from one co-locutor to another. Moreover, participants in such interactions will regularly perform manual gestures, give off emotions and attitudes through facial expressions, and, depending on the setting, they will change their body posture or freely move around—all of which, as will be seen, prove vital component sources of information in spoken discourse.
Next, this seminar will survey and explore the diverse phenomena that ‘build up’ written texts:
Obviously, writing (in English) combines both alphabetical and non-alphabetical symbols: The former include the letter forms that make up words, which are equipped with additional meanings, for instance, typographical variants like bold face or italics, while the latter involve the various punctuation marks as well as a conventionalized set of different symbols (e.g., &, §, %). And this inventory may then generate considerably complex forms, syntactic structures that not infrequently span over several lines as in academic articles, news reports, or traditional novels. Beyond these symbolic representations, written discourse regularly calls on a variety of vision-based formats to organize information in terms of its familiar two-dimensional display: We find layout features such as paragraphs, separated by white spaces and, again depending on the type of text, we come across various design formats like headlines, tables, figures, graphs, colored boxes, or images.
And addressing the new technologies, ‘writing’ also goes beyond such static spatial arrangements: In the course of the digital literacy (r)evolution, numerous dynamic options have developed that functionalize time-/motion-based devices (among them the well-known animated emoticons). As a consequence, users are confronted with sophisticated non-linear techniques to engage with a text that allow the reader to fundamentally restructure and amplify the original communicate according to their individual needs and interests as, e.g., in hypertext.
Empfohlene Literatur:
The essential course material will be made accessible for participants in PDF form. Among others, it will include introductory reading materials, PowerPoint Presentations to introduce and survey the course topic(s), various how-to’s for the written tasks students are expected to carefully carry out as well as a pool of texts for their initial reading task. Additional texts will be provided on request; participants are, however, expected to thoroughly research up-to-date literature on their respective projects.
Zusätzliche Informationen:
On a personal note: In these days of Covid-19 that still exerts severe constraints on personal interaction in class, this seminar continues to take the chance to work on and enhance students’ writing skills. Indeed, we should understand this situation as a welcome opportunity since, according to L2 teaching and applied linguistics’ experts, written competences have dramatically decreased over the last few decades when oral skills have been in the center of attention, not only in university classes. And for seminar students, this emphasis on academic writing may well have an advantageous ’side effect’ in view of their upcoming bachelor thesis.
Accordingly, the requirements for Active Participation in this course will place a focus on academic writing and enhance participants’ skills in fundamental research presentation formats, such as a critical reading report of two scholarly articles, to be chosen from a large selection of current research in spoken and written discourse. Students will have the opportunity to compile a scientific poster on their own project, using authentic data (from ready at hand internet sources) that is supposed to present their initial findings and insights into a pervasive phenomenon of text or talk. This exploratory work will occupy participants over the second half of the term, and it will then serve as the sound basis for their empirical term paper. Further details of organization and study material will follow in due time.
To be granted Active Participation, students are expected to hand in four written tasks in total during the semester, among them answering some study questions on two introductory survey chapters and a critical reading report of a research article centering on text or talk. As Modulprüfung, a term paper of about 3,500 words will have to be handed in after the end of the term in pdf form, its date of submission will be announced on time.
Further detailed updates on the course and its organization will be available shortly before the start of the term. In case of any queries on whatever issue, please do feel free to contact me any time via e-mail to mlampert@uni-mainz.de.
Digitale Lehre:
As announced, this class will be entirely digital, and we will be communicating via two channels—first, the LMS-software of JGU (see https://lms.uni-mainz.de) will be the major information platform, providing background sources, course materials, and various how-to guidelines. Second, any individual exchange will take place via e-mail, for which I will not only be regularly available in virtual office hours during course time (Tuesday12:15 AM to 1:45 PM, starting on October 19, 2021, but also everybody is welcome to get in touch with me any time at mlampert@uni-mainz.de.
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