Course aims:

This course focuses on two broad types of specialized discourse, traditional and new-media discourse, on the one hand, and the workplace discourse, on the other.
It aims at engaging students critically with topics like 1) identity construction, 2) power and discourse, and 3) storytelling as discursive strategy.
Another aim of the course is encouraging students to gather data for their analyses from ‘real-life’ contexts.

Course Entry Requirements:

-

Course contents:

Types of specialized discourses; Media as language use; Media rhetorics; Rhetoric in political speeches; Persuasion and power; Media storytelling: Narrative strategies; Personal narratives as storytelling modes; New-media language and identity construction: Youth and cyber-identities; Gender identity and the workplace discourse; Using humour in the construction of gender identity at work; Integrating professional and gender identity at work; Women and men telling stories at work

Teaching methods:

Discussion, case studies, collaborative learning

Learning outcomes:

Awareness and understanding of the critical concepts and the genre conventions which specialized discourses are constructed on; Use of theoretical framework in analyzing and producing specialized texts.

Learning outcomes verification and assessment criteria:

Continuous assessment (50%); final written assignment with oral defense (50%)

Recommended reading:

Durant, Alan & Marina Lambrou, Language and media: A resource book for students, Routledge, London & New York, 2009,
Holmes, Janet, Gender Talk at Work. Constructing Gender Identity Through Workplace Discourse, Blackwell, Oxford, 2006,
Johnson, Sally & Astrid Ensslin (Eds.), Language in the Media: Representations, Identities, Ideologies, Continuum, London & New York, 2007,
Somers, Margaret R., "The narrative constitution of identity: A relational and network approach." Theory and Society 23(5) 1994, 605-649.