English Language BA (Hons)

Module description:
Have you ever wondered why some accents are perceived as being ‘cooler’, ‘friendlier’ or ‘uglier’ than others? Or whether there is any truth in statements such as “they speak really bad English in…” or “young people cannot write properly any more”? If so, ENGL106 Attitudes to English is the right module for you!
In this module, we will explore the concept of ‘attitude’ and how attitudinal judgements towards different aspects of language use (e.g. accents and dialects of English within the UK and overseas, gendered language, internet language, etc) come about in the history of English. We will also learn about the methods that social scientists use to explore language attitudes and how to put both theory and practice to the test by designing a mini-attitude project exercise. This mini-attitude exercise will be part of the final module assessment (40% of the final mark) and will be complemented by a take-home exam (60% of the final mark) at the end of the semester.
By taking this module, you will be exposed to different teaching styles (small and large-group teaching) and activities (e.g. critical reading and discussion of selected research articles, hands-on computer activities, out-of-university visits, in-class group-work and debate, exposure to both in-house and expert guest speakers) which will help you to not only develop an adequate understanding of key concepts and processes but also seek to enhance your:
Digital fluency: The ‘methodology block’ of the module will teach you how to navigate and use effectively on-line databases (e.g. newspaper repositories, corpora and corpus-specific software) and compile and analyse datasets both quantitatively and qualitatively.
Global citizenship: The topics explored in the module lend themselves to cross-cultural and cross-national comparisons. In fact, comparisons with other countries and/or cultures will be at the centre of the materials that we cover. You will also be encouraged to carry out comparative exercises across (inter)national contexts for your Attitudes assessed exercise.

This course will offer students a solid background in basic linguistic analysis for English while also exploring the various contexts in which language is used. For example, students will be learning about the sounds of English while looking at how children learn their first language, or the structures of English from the perspective of a second language learner. Students will explore the breadth of English Language studies looking at how language is learnt/processed in our minds and how it is used in both micro-interactions (e.g. looking at how the police may be trying to frame a suspect) and macro-interactions at the level of society (e.g. looking at media representation of migrants). Students will learn basic qualitative and quantitative research methods and will meet a range of lecturers teaching in years 2/3, each with their own distinctive teaching style.

This module is an introduction to the fundamentals of linguistic study. Students will gain an understanding of several key issues in the linguistic study of the English Language. The module will normally also introduce students to specialist software and resources used by active researchers in the field. Students will acquire skills in using specialist notation (including the International Phonetic Alphabet) and in analysing the features of the English Language.

Stylistics is concerned with the language of literature in the broadest sense of the word: ranging from poems and novels to advertisements and political slogans. In this module students will seek linguistic answers for some of the most essential questions in the study of texts, such as: Why do some kinds of language use grab readers’ attention more than others? What tools do writers employ to mediate the speech and thought of other people? How do metaphors shape our understanding of the world? The concepts covered on this module form a solid foundation for further language study at levels 2 and 3.

The aim of this course is to introduce you to key theoretical and conceptual debates within Film Studies. It will develop your ability to apply these concepts to close readings of film texts and, in doing so, enhance your skills of critical analysis and independent thinking.

This module introduces students to a key skill in literary study, that of precise and informed analysis of text (close reading).

Taking this module will help you to gain skill in reconstructing and evaluating arguments, in analysing, interpreting, and thinking critically about textual and statistical information, and in thinking creatively. There are 100 minutes’ worth of lectures per week and, running from Week 2 onwards, ten weekly online tests. The first two online tests are purely formative. Each of the remaining eight online tests contributes 5% of the module result. A 2-hour on-line examination contributes the remaining 60%.

The aim of the course is to give you grounding in analytical skills, an appreciation of the significance of film as a medium, and an ability to write about film in an accessible and well informed way for different audiences and different purposes.

Furthermore, the course will introduce you to the basic components of the audiovisual ‘language’ which film uses to communicate with its audience, and to the methods that you should use when analysing how any one film uses this language. We will look at a wide variety of films selected for their particularly innovative or influential treatment of different aspects of this ‘language’.

Artists, art-critics and the general public ordinarily provide their own accounts as to what art means and why it is valuable. In this module, such accounts are subjected to critical scrutiny: seemingly obvious answers give rise to nuanced and complex questions, in true philosophical fashion. To a large extent, this is accomplished through close attention to particular artworks from a variety of genres. The module also includes a guided activity component, which leads to the preparation of a reflective log in an authentic-learning context. By completing this module, one’s intuitions about the significance and the meaning of art will be liable to modification and fine-tuning, will become dialectically informed, and will stand up to challenge in real-world situations.

This module will allow students to develop critical methods of reading and contextual analysis of literary texts. Lectures and tutorials will explore a range of critical methodologies (for example psychoanalysis and postcolonialism) as well as topics focused on the modes, attitudes and concerns that underlie the production of literature in relation to politics, society and culture. In doing so students will be introduced to key debates within literary study, as well as addressing topics important to different periods including issues of race, gender, sexuality, literary form, environment and economy.

This module aims to develop and challenge accepted modes of reading in order to expand and strengthen original critical enquiry while also improving students’ written, oral and digital communication skills.

Learn how to read an image, images from advertising (commercial and public service), company logotypes, Asterix and satirical political cartoons (Charlie Hebdo)

This module deals with one of the most fascinating subfields of (psycho)linguistics: child language acquisition. It is intended to serve as an introduction to the field, including a discussion of the major theoretical and methodological issues. Taking into account a bi/multilingual perspective throughout, the module covers lexical, morphological, syntactic and pragmatic development. Based on the critical discussion of research articles in class, students will conduct their own small-scale analysis as part of their assessment. Furthermore, there will be 4 screenings of documentaries throughout the semester in order to allow for a critical discussion of the representation of scientific research in the popular media (a mini-essay on one of the screened films is also part of the assessment).

This course examines the interactive relationship between language and society. It explores language variation and the influence of social factors, such as social class, social networks and gender on the way we speak. Within the prism of interactional sociolinguistics, it examines speakers’ construction of social identities and the importance of context in identity construction. The module also aims to address sociolinguistic phenomena, such as diglossia, bilingualism and language shift that emerge from language contact. Relevant theories will be applied to naturally occurring data and methodological issues of data collection and analysis will be examined. The module is taught via synchronous or asynchronous whole cohort sessions, synchronous small group sessions, independent study and your own small scale sociolinguistic study in an area of language in society.

This module provides an introduction to sociolinguistic and ethnographic approaches to the study of multilingualism. We will look at what language is, what multilingualism is, how individuals use multiple languages in everyday interaction, and how multiple languages are managed in society.

The module addresses both the intrinsic and explicitly theorised moral frameworks of Greco-Roman antiquity, by looking at select sources ranging from the Homeric epic to Hellenistic and Roman philosophy. The issues examined during the module include: reciprocity as ethical model (revenge, justice, solidarity), the goods of the self vs the "external" goods, happiness and morality, valuing other people as part of one’s own moral well-being.

This module explores the works of the Roman poet Ovid which span a wide range of genres and themes. We will focus on a core set text (or set texts) within its sociocultural contexts, wider literary traditions, and the rest of the Ovidian corpus.

Pragmatics is the study of meaning in context, of how the situation surrounding a sentence/utterance, (who said it, where, when and why?) influences how we understand its meaning. This 30 credit Level 2 module examines several relevant theories and looks at some of the ways that these theories are being applied to other areas of study (e.g. to how children learn language). It is delivered through weekly teaching sessions, and assessed by an assignment and a take-home paper.

The module aims to prepare students for a smooth transition into a work placement year and, more broadly, to develop lifelong skills, attitudes and behaviours and support students in their continuing professional development. This will help students lead flexible, fulfilling careers working as a professional in their field, and enable them to contribute meaningfully to society.

This module explores questions concerning the relationship of language to consciousness. This entails addressing questions concerning the nature of language in its evolutionary, acquisitional, developmental and degenerative stages. Through examining a range of communication systems, such as those used by computers, apes, and other animals, students will achieve an understanding of the unique nature of language in its relation to the human mind.

The Trojan War is one of the ‘great stories’ of Western culture. The Iliad most famously replays a crucial episode: the anger of Achilles following insult from the Achaean (Greek) leader Agamemnon and its deadly consequences. But alongside other contemporary epic poems, events from the ten-year struggle between the Achaeans and Trojans have been rewritten, restaged, and represented in literature and art across antiquity and down the centuries into modern times. This module examines some of these various attempts to ‘rebuild Troy’, tracing the myth through a range of source material, including epic poetry, Greek sculpture and painted pottery, Athenian tragedy, Hellenistic inscriptions, Roman poetry, nineteenth-century European art and film. By putting each ‘reception’ of the myth into its social, political and historical contexts, the module traces the fluidity and malleability of Troy in the cultural imagination, and asks what Trojan stories reveal about the societies that tell them, ancient and modern.

In this module, students will learn about the processes, mechanisms, events and ideologies that have contributed to the change of the English language across time. Students will experience different types of teaching environments, including general group sessions and practical small-group teaching sessions. The general-group sessions will be used to survey general themes, approaches or methodologies to historical linguistic analysis. The small-group sessions will be based around different types of exercises (eg discussion of research articles, text-analysis) and provide group discussion of relevant language issues and their implications in a wider context.

Situated between the end of World War One and the Nazi takeover of power, the Weimar Republic witnessed a ‘crisis of classical modernity’; the period retains a reputation for modernity and decadence. Against a background of political and economic experimentation and uncertainty, it saw a growth in advertising, shopping, urban life and transport, fashion and film. Taught in a mixture of lectures and seminars, this module focuses on cultural representations of the period, through the study of two films: Berlin: Sinfonie der Großstadt (Berlin: Symphony of the Metropolis, 1927) and Marlene Dietrich’s first major feature, Der Blaue Engel (The Blue Angel, 1931); and two literary texts: Erich Kästner, Emil und die Detektive (Emil and the Detectives, 1928), and Irmgard Keun, Das kunstseidene Mädchen (The Artificial Silk Girl, 1932). Through close reading and thematic analysis, we will consider how they depict and define the modern metropolis; changing ideas about class and gender; and new forms of working life, entertainment and leisure.

This module will introduce students to a range of literary and cultural forms which give prominence to women’s roles in cultural and social change. Students will engage with a number of key texts and gender related concepts and will consider the ways in which representations of women, whether produced by women or, indeed, by men, have both influenced and been influenced by important social and cultural movements in Spain, Portugal and Latin America from the early modern to the modern eras.

The module intends to familiarise students with central themes of aesthetics and art theory, especially questions about aesthetic judgement, aesthetic experience and aesthetic value. They will be able to strengthen their understanding of the history of philosophy, as well as the connection between theory and artistic practice. The module is taught by lecture (1 hour per week) and seminar (1 hour per week). Assessment is via a 3,000 word essay (85% of the module mark) and one 10-15 minute presentation (delivered during seminars, or recorded if on-line only teaching) that provides the remaining 15% of the module mark.

This module will equip students with a knowledge of how discourse works at linguistic, metalinguistic, and paralinguistic levels. You will be exposed to a wide range of discourse types and will learn methodologies (and their theoretical bases) available for analysing them, especially with a view to exposing meanings which would otherwise remain hidden.

This module explores the relationship between comics, memory and history. Some of the most engaging comics of our times represent marginalised histories of individuals and communities, and whole genres of comics today are committed to drawing attention and striving against historical and contemporary systems of oppression. Over the last decades, comics have started documenting forgotten histories, conveying testimonies and enabling forms of self representation and transcultural belonging. Yet this medium has a long and complex history of depicting race and ethnicity, reinforcing discrimination and marginalisation and popularising colonial stereotypes. This module engages with such history, and with authors who are redrawing it.
This module develops a language-sensitive approach to comics and graphic novels beyond the Anglosphere; the syllabus introduces the students to a series of linguistic and cultural contexts in which comics have been developed and translated since the 20th century.

This module develops research and critical skills when examining digital cultures with a particular focus on the Americas. It takes examples that encompass North, Central, and South America as well as the Caribbean. Building confidence in handling theoretical tools in the analysis of digital cultures it examines a range of professional and amateur content creators from social, institutional and personal perspectives and considers issues of curatorship, archival approaches, the ethics of (re)appropriation and remediation, and the relationship between the self and the public and private spheres.

This module gives you the option to write a 10,000-word dissertation. You will be expected to formulate a dissertation proposal in advance, and if this is accepted, you will be allocated an academic supervisor. This module gives you a chance to focus on a specific topic or area that interests you within the study of either English language or literature, and allows you to demonstrate your capacity in undertaking a piece of serious, independent research.

This module gives you the option to write a 10,000-word dissertation. You will be expected to formulate a dissertation proposal in advance, and if this is accepted, you will be allocated an academic supervisor. This module gives you a chance to focus on a specific topic or area that interests you within the study of either English language or literature, and allows you to demonstrate your capacity in undertaking a piece of serious, independent research.

This module gives you the option to write a 10,000-word dissertation. You will be expected to formulate a dissertation proposal in advance, and if this is accepted, you will be allocated an academic supervisor. This module gives you a chance to focus on a specific topic or area that interests you within the study of either English language or literature, and allows you to demonstrate your capacity in undertaking a piece of serious, independent research.

Fiction is a place where unreal things can happen…

This module looks at the genre of the fantastic, the cross-over between real and unreal, and marvellous in some of the best known works of German-language literature: the Grimms’ fairytales; ‘Blond Eckbert’, a ‘fairytale’ invented by Ludwig Tieck; and ETA Hoffmann’s Der Sandmann (The Sandman), a text dealing with madness and magic. We will also look at some modern versions of classic fairytales.

Close reading of the set texts will be paired with a range of critical analysis including contemporary approaches including disability studies and queer readings, as well as established frameworks by theorists such as Propp, Bettelheim, Bottigheimer and feminist critics (Warner, Tatar). The module will also introduce key theories with a particular emphasis on Todorov’s theory of the fantastic and Freud’s theory of Das Unheimliche (‘the Uncanny’).

This module places language among other meaning-making systems or “codes”, such as gestures, colours and sound. All these are examined by the discipline called Semiotics – that is “the science of signs” which asks the question of how meanings are organised and how reality is conceptualised. This course discusses the scope of Semiotics, its core concepts, main figures and methodological tools. The theoretical approaches presented range from structuralist theories to post-structuralism/social semiotics/multimodality. The module also offers an analysis of a variety of cultural products/processes through the application of semiotic concepts and methods, drawing examples from e.g. storytelling, comics, marketing/advertising, art/design, the media, the body, fashion, food and music, thus reflecting the broad interdisciplinary nature of the discipline. Emphasis will be placed on language as one of the meaning-making modes available to humans, capturing the interplay between verbal and non-verbal semiotic resources. There are no pre-requisites for this module, but some knowledge of pragmatics, (critical) discourse analysis, gender studies and sociolinguistics can be advantageous.

The module aims to provide students with an introduction to the principles and practice of teaching English to speakers of other languages, and to help prepare students with little or no teaching experience to teach English to speakers of other languages in the private or voluntary sectors or while travelling abroad.

This module aims to introduce students to the new trends in contemporary Italian cinema and to the main relevant theoretical and critical approaches in the field.

The relationship between language and gender has been broadly studied within a range of disciplines, including linguistics, anthropology and sociology. Issues relating to the differences between men’s and women’s linguistic behaviour have been addressed since early 20th century and are still a recurrent topic in contemporary societies. This module examines the role of language in constructing gender and reviews past and recent theoretical approaches to language and gender, particularly relating to the fields of sociolinguistics, (critical) discourse analysis and conversation analysis. Focusing on empirical work, relevant theories are applied to a range of data including conversational talk and written texts. In particular, we will explore gender ideologies in society, how gender identities intersect with other social identities, and the importance of context in gender identity construction. The relationship of language and gender will be addressed in a variety of contexts such as media discourse, conversational talk, politics and the workplace, educational settings and (children’s) fiction. Students are expected to conduct an empirical study in an area of language and gender which will require the collection and analysis of original data.

This module is concerned with some of the ways in which different frameworks for linguistic analysis can be applied to the study of literary texts. A variety of different linguistic methods will be introduced, and a range of literary texts will be explored in relation, for instance, to foregrounding, point of view, thought and speech presentation and literary inference. Issues discussed will include how narrators communicate with readers, how characters within fictional texts communicate with each other, and what determines the nature of ‘literary’ texts. In the assessment, students are encouraged to explore further linguistic frameworks which are of particular interest to them and to apply these to the analysis of one or more literary texts of their own choosing in an imaginative and original way.

This is an interdisciplinary module which aims to get students to think critically about imaginative literature and philosophical approaches to literature. It familiarises students with some of the main issues, theories and arguments relating to the ontology, value and structure of literature, as well as concept critical theory.
The module discusses key themes at the intersection of philosophy and literature; there is usually a focus on the genre of tragedy. The module is taught by lecture 1 hour per week and seminar 1 hour per week. Assessment is via class presentation (10%) and two coursework essays (40%, 50%).

The module explores how popular culture can be political by examining a range of popular cultural commodities discursively. The module surveys a range of views on how to examine popular culture in order to contextualise discourse analysis. This is examined and then used to critically consider the political potential of popular culture. Successful students will be able to critically analyse a range of popular cultural commodities such as film, television programmes, digital popular culture, popular music and the tabloid press. The module is delivered in the forms of lectures and more hands-on analysis during seminars. Students are assessed by an essay, which is an analysis of a popular culture commodity.

This module is an opportunity for you to undertake a placement in a setting which matches your academic and possible career/industry interests, develop materials and/or undertake tasks within a practical or vocational context, apply academic knowledge from your degree, and develop your personal and employability skills within a working environment. SOTA300 is not open to students who have taken SOTA600.

This module will introduce students to approaches to memory and to a body of textual, visual, material representation of terror that has become a key focus for critical analysis in recent cultural studies. It will provide a context in which students can engage in systematic comparisons between European, Latin American and East Asian experiences and representations of social and political trauma. It will also encourage students to reflect systematically on the political and ethical implications of literary, material, digital and cinematic representations of traumatic histories. You will have the opportunity to study in depth and compare examples of representation through different media and across different national and linguistic boundaries. Lectures provide background both to the main theoretical approaches, and to specific representations. In weekly seminars, you will work on the case studies covered in class, and on related materials. Assessment is on the basis of a poster and an essay.

This module focuses specifically on varieties of English spoken in Northern England and aims to address the perception and conceptualisation of these varieties relative to Modern Standard English, Received Pronunciation, and other non-standard varieties of English. The module will address what it means to be Northern, to speak a Northern dialect, to represent that dialect in writing. Students will discuss the phonetic, phonological, morphological and syntactic features of several different Northern varieties. The relationship between geographical background and identity is also addressed as well as linguistic changes currently in progress in UK Englishes. Students are expected to conduct their own research project where they collect and analyse their own original data, present their findings, and address the implications of their work as part of the assessment.

The module will typically provide an introduction to the history of slavery in the Francophone and Hispanic Worlds, situating the phenomenon of modern slavery within an understanding of historical slavery. Students will then study a range of representations of slavery that have arisen in response to historical slavery. These will typically range from first person slave accounts from the early modern period which provide an individual perspective on the history of slavery; literary and filmic representations of slavery and cultural responses to slavery, particularly in the heritage industries through the practice of Dark Tourism. The module will typically include a visit to the International Slavery Museum in the Albert Dock, Liverpool.

A large proportion of films are based on written texts and this module will introduce you to a range of cinematic adaptations of literary works from across Modern Languages. Using adaptation theory to inform your analysis, you will have the opportunity to study excerpts from texts and consider the issues that arise from their adaptation as films. How does cinema convey a sense of the past or modify literary works from a different time period? How does it represent the gender roles which can be a central preoccupation of literature? How does film transcend language boundaries to bring modern-language texts to new audiences? On this module you will have the opportunity to explore these areas whilst also developing skills in film analysis, journalistic writing and academic writing.