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Instructors: PD Dr. habil. Martina Lampert
Event type:
Seminar
Displayed in timetable as:
05.008.760
Hours per week:
2
Credits:
8,0
Language of instruction:
Englisch
Min. | Max. participants:
- | 30
Registration group: ELing 760
Priority scheme: Senatsrichtlinie
Requirements / organisational issues:
To obtain credit, participants are expected to prepare two short (team) activities to be presented in class: first, reviewing an article of choice from a cross-section of current (qualitative) research on text and discourse; second, adopting a decisively empirical stance and a ‘learning by doing’ method to empirical research in form of small-scale case studies, students will then engage in an individual or a team project centering on one of the approaches introduced and finally present the initial findings of their research (which will then serve as a sound basis for participants’ potential term papers).
Details of organization and study material will be available by the first meeting.
Contents:
This (research) seminar will survey and discuss a selection of current qualitative approaches in linguistics, introducing participants to fairly recent strands of research such as multimodality/-mediality, third-wave sociolinguistics, and discourse studies.
For one, multimodality focuses on the obvious fact that in an(y) act of speaking interlocutors will necessarily draw on all the dimensions of communication available to speech: Apart from the verbal repertoire, non-verbal sources of information such as the prosodic cues of pitch contour or variation in loudness as well as eye-contact, manual gestures, facial expressions, and body posture prove vital components in interaction. Or the emerging study of multimediality specifically targets printed and electronic text: The language-image link in printed media, functionalizing spatial displays, typography, and colors has become a central topic of discussion, as have the radical structural changes in the communicative practice of electronic communication.
Second, third-wave sociolinguistics, drawing on insights of ethnomethodology and linguistic anthropology, addresses the negotiation of social meaning among individuals in ever-changing encounters, in which linguistic variation does not simply reflect, but essentially constructs social meaning and emerges as a force in social change.
And third, the diverse approaches to discourse – among them critical discourse analysis, conversation analysis, and social semiotics – provide a multifaceted array of perspectives to text and talk: power relations and their resistance; informal sociable encounters or task-focused videoconferences; the different semiotic materialities of speaking and sound vs. writing and image.
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