Course Details in 2026/27 Session

Module Title	LH Language, Culture and Communication: Digging into the text
School	Lan, Cult, Art Hist & Music
Department	Modern Languages
Module Code	09 32333
Module Lead	Dr Petar Milin & Prof Dagmar Divjak
Level	Honours Level
Credits	20
Semester	Semester 2
Pre-requisites
Co-requisites
Restrictions	None
Contact Hours	Lecture-20 hours Project supervision-1 hours Practical Classes and workshops-10 hours Guided independent study-169 hours Total: 200 hours
Exclusions
Description	In an increasingly data-driven, digitalized world, students of language, communication, culture and society, too, must be data literate. Being able to interrogate large text or media collections enables them to provide unexpected answers to the most pressing cultural and societal questions of their disciplines: 1. How objective is our information: how do the sources present an event, a person, a literary work or a piece of music?; 2. Where does our information originate: what are the defining characteristics of a prominent author’s or critic’s writing style?; 3. How credible are our sources: what are the indicators of truthfulness in communication, at present, and in historical times (a.k.a. ‘fake news’)?. An unexpected source of answers to all these questions lies in language and how it is used. Humanities graduates who know how to access diverse data sources (including social-media archives such as Twitter) and how to use simple techniques that detect lexical and structural patterns are in a position to discover novel and exciting answers to old and new questions of culture and society. This module teaches students the very skills they need to query big data collections to address a wide range of questions about language, communication, culture and society. More specifically, this module introduces students to the use of large digital data collections, a.k.a. corpora, which have become the main source of data across a range of disciplines. Using data effectively and intelligently is a skill that belongs in the toolbox of every humanities graduate. Crucially it is a highly sought-after transferrable skill that will improve their employability. Students will be introduced to the principles and techniques of language, communication and culture research using large data collections. These methods will facilitate students’ content-analytic work by teaching them how to access and process large amounts of data with ease and confidence, with the aim of answering a particular research question. In particular, students who successfully complete the module will be; 1. Aware of the variety of text archives and corpora available and able to select those that are suitable for their research; 2. Familiar with the construction of text archives, and how they are developed into language corpora (this includes knowledge of the benefits of standardization, tagging and annotation [marking-up], the relevance of statistical tools etc.); 3. Equipped to envision and design how text archives and corpora can facilitate productivity both in the context of professional work and in scientific research within the text-based approaches to language, communication and culture studies; 4. Able to apply basic insights and techniques in a small research project of their own. Thanks to the availability of prallel corpora (corpora containing the same text in two or more languages) students will be able draw comparisons across their languages of choice.
Learning Outcomes	By the end of the module students should be able to: Select, access and query existing text archives and corpora, available and suitable for professional work and research in culture, communication and language studies Work under different standards for text archiving and corpora development (e.g., tags, mark-up codes), and be an efficient and productive user, capable of combining and unifying (i.e., super-standardizing) different resources Demonstrate the essential knowledge and skills of a range of methods for analysing the results of queries on text archives and corpora Reflect critically (orally and in writing) on research that makes use of data extracted from text archives and corpora.
Assessment	32333-01 : Literature Review in English for research poster : Coursework (30%) 32333-02 : Research Poster in English : Coursework (50%) 32333-03 : Oral Presentation at Poster Presentation Meeting : Presentation (20%)
Assessment Methods & Exceptions	Assessment A 1000-word critical review (in English) of relevant literature (reading at least one source in the target language, where appropriate) in preparation for the poster research project (30%) Research Poster, in English (50%) A 5-minute oral presentation in English at the final poster presentation meeting (20%) Reassessment No resits are permitted in final year. If students miss the assessed task owing to extenuating circumstances, the failed task would be rescheduled at a later date.
Other
Reading List