Delivered at:: School of Foreign Languages

Course type:: Elective course

When:: 4 year, 1 module

Instructor

Tulyakov, Dmitriy

Full Syllabus

Abstract

This course offers an introduction to Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), providing students with essential theoretical foundations and practical skills. Participants will explore key concepts such as discourse, language, power, ideology, and representation. The course aims to develop students' ability to recognize the complexity of communication within social contexts and power dynamics. Students will learn to question overt meanings in discourse by examining language cues and will cultivate critical thinking skills necessary for linguistic analysis across various media. By the end's end, students will be able to define and apply key CDA concepts, describe relevant methods and linguistic features, conduct analyses using multiple approaches, and effectively report findings both in writing and presentations. This course equips learners with valuable analytical and argumentative skills applicable to diverse fields involving textual and communicative analysis.

Learning Objectives

The main learning objectives of this course are to - introduce students to the key notions of critical discourse analysis, such as discourse, language, power, ideology, multimodality, representation - enable students to instantly recognize the complexity of communication and how it is conditioned by the social context, power relations, and interests of participants - encourage students to question and challenge the overt meaning of texts by attending to subtler language cues - develop students’ critical thinking skills necessary to do linguistic analysis of discourse in English and other languages across a range of media - improve students’ skills of argumentation necessary to make a case for an analytical reading of a discourse artefact

Expected Learning Outcomes

Define key concepts of critical discourse analysis and explain their practical application
Describe methods of critical discourse studies and linguistic features whose analysis these methods involve
Carry out critical discourse analysis using several approaches and methods
Report and interpret results of critical discourse analysis in writing and in a presentation

Course Contents

Section 1. What Is (Critical) Discourse Analysis?
Section 2. Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis
Section 3. A CDA Research Project

Assessment Elements

Mid-module test
Class work and participation
Independent study (analytical essay)
Independent study (analytical essay) (0.3) Independent study is evaluated in the for of an analytical essay. The essay has to be a 750-1000 word (excluding references and appendices) text in English presenting a piece of original critical discourse analysis of the material collected by the student following the model proposed by Heritage and Taylor (see https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/s3-euw1-ap-pe-ws4-cws-documents.ri-prod/9781032397016/Appendix%201.pdf ). The essay topic should be approved by the instructor by the specified deadline (about midway through the course). In case the topic has not been approved, the instructor has the right not to accept and grade the essay. The essay should be formatted according to the APA style guide, 7th edition (see https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines and https://apastyle.apa.org/instructional-aids/student-paper-setup-guide.pdf ) The essay has to be submitted in the form and by the deadline specified by the instructor on the first or the second class. Late submissions are not accepted and not graded. The essay cannot be resubmitted.
Seminar presentation
Seminar presentation In the end of the course students are to give a 5 minute presentation in English of their research projects and its results. The presentation is given on one of the last seminars of the course at the time specified by the instructor beforehand. The presentation is prepared on the basis of the analytical essay that the student has submitted and is based on the same material as the essay. The topic of the presentation is the same topic as the approved topic of the analytical essay, and the parts of the presentation should mirror the parts of the essay based on the Frazer and Heritage model. Minor diversions from the essay are acceptable.

Interim Assessment

2024/2025 1st module
0.2 * Class work and participation + 0.3 * Independent study (analytical essay) + 0.2 * Mid-module test + 0.3 * Seminar presentation

Bibliography

Recommended Core Bibliography

Teun A. Van Dijk. (2001). Principles of Critical Discourse Analysis.

Recommended Additional Bibliography

Ali, A., & Soomro, M. I. (2020). A Critical Discourse Analysis of an Essay: Employing Ruth Wodak’s Model.

Authors

Tuliakov Dmitrii Sergeevich
Барклянская Надежда Владимировна
SHEVELEVA MARINA SERGEEVNA

Bachelor’s Programme 'Foreign Languages and Intercultural Communication in Business'

Critical discourse analysis