If you find any data displayed on this website that should be amended, please contact the Curriculum Management Team.
Module Title
LM Lexis
School
Eng, Drama, & Creative Studies
Department
Linguistics and Communication
Module Code
09 29910
Module Lead
Dr Crayton Walker
Level
Masters Level
Credits
20
Semester
Full Term
Pre-requisites
Co-requisites
Restrictions
None
Exclusions
Description
The study of lexis is the study of vocabulary in all its different aspects. Vocabulary is typically seen as individual words, whereas lexis is a somewhat wider concept and consists of collocations, phraseology and formulaic expressions.
In this module students will start by considering questions such as; what is a word, what isn’t a word, where does a word stop and a phrase begin? The module also looks at the mental lexicon, how words are stored in the brain and how the mental lexicon works.
The module also covers topics such as: - how words are used to label and order things - how culturally specific this whole area of study can be - the relationship between words and their meaning, e.g. synonymy, antonym etc - the process of word formation and how words actually appear in the language and how they are coined - we also consider the importance and ubiquity of multiword units, lexicalised sequences and lexical bundles - the implications that findings of recent corpus based research have for the teaching of lexis.
Learning Outcomes
By the end of the module students should be able to:
demonstrate an advanced understanding of word combinations, idioms, and semantic relationships (e.g. synonymy, antonym and hyponymy etc) and how these operate in discourse.
describe how words are stored and accessed in the mind and explain the processes of word formation;
critically discuss the implications that the theory of lexis has for language teaching.
demonstrate an understanding of semantic features such as semantic prosody, semantic preference, grammar patterning, phraseology and collocation.
