Course Details in 2024/25 Session

Module Title	LI Language and power
School	Lan, Cult, Art Hist & Music
Department	Modern Languages
Module Code	09 39282
Module Lead	Alice Corr and Emanuelle Santos
Level	Intermediate Level
Credits	20
Semester	Semester 2
Pre-requisites
Co-requisites
Restrictions	None
Contact Hours	Seminar-30 hours Guided independent study-170 hours Total: 200 hours
Exclusions
Description	This module fosters students' ability to identify and articulate the relationship between, and conflation of, language and power. Through a transdisciplinary approach combining the applied study of linguistics and linguistic anthropology, postcolonial critical thought, and cultural analysis, we will encounter different languages around the world, situating language and power relations in historical and geopolitical terms. Focusing mainly on issues of contact and difference in terms of linguistic, social and cultural systems, we will identify and deconstruct pre- and misconceptions surrounding how language is used to exert and react to power, learning to challenge the fetishization of peoples and languages and their sociocultural and linguistic identities. Throughout, we will combine theory with reflective practice to better understand how language and culture are used as a tool for domination, leading students to critically reassess their own position in this transnational process as language users endowed with agency.
Learning Outcomes	By the end of the module students should be able to: Compare and contrast the ways in which 'common sense' understandings of language serve to construct difference and convey power relations; Demonstrate their analytical skills with attention to specific linguistic, historic, socio-political and cultural contexts; Identify and critique expressions of oppression and resistance in language, culture and context; Critique and reflect on how language and power structures within languages and cultures have shaped social and cultural histories
Assessment
Assessment Methods & Exceptions	Assessment: 1 x portfolio of evidence of learning (3,500 word-equivalent), in English (100%) Reassessment: Re-submit failed component
Other
Reading List