3BA Proseminars (summer term 2014/2015) :: Proseminaria 3BA (semestr letni 2014/2015)

Grupa B:

 

The aim of the seminar is to familiarize students with dictionaries of the English language, mainly those for foreign learners. Monolingual learners’ dictionaries will be of primary interest, but other dictionary types will also be considered. The rise of the dictionary for learners of English as a foreign language will be briefly discussed and the compilation process will be explained. Most importantly, participants will get an insight into dictionary structures and some user-oriented solutions adopted in learners’ dictionaries. The reading of the materials assigned will be supplemented by a critical examination of pedagogical dictionaries available in electronic form and on paper. Recent advances will be studied, including those which involve multimedia, to appreciate how much the dictionary designed for non-native users of English has changed since the time of its founding fathers. The seminar will encourage participants to look at dictionaries from a new, critical perspective and assess the effectiveness of the modifications discussed. There are no special course prerequisites; everybody who wants to be able to look at (learners’) dictionaries from a different perspective is welcome.

Béjoint, Henri. 2010. The Lexicography of English. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
Götz-Votteler, Katrin – Thomas Herbst. 2009. “Innovation in advanced learner’s dictionaries of English”. Lexicographica 25: 47-66.
Hartmann, Reinhard R. K. 2001. Teaching and Researching Lexicography. Harlow: Pearson Education.

In the introductory courses to linguistics the descriptions of various levels of language are offered: phonology, morphology, syntax. Going beyond syntax means entering the realm of textlinguistics, discourse analysis or discourse studies. This seminar starts with an attempt to delimit the field, its subject matter and scope. In the empirical part of the course it will discuss a number of case studies presenting how to conduct qualitative and quantitative text analyses. The focus of these investigations will be on language and society in a specific cultural context. The aim of this seminar is to offer an overview of a range of approaches to discourse analysis, present the criticisms it provokes and to give students hands-on experience in analysing texts.

Course requirements: Students will be assessed on the basis of in-class participation (60%, in-class tasks) and oral presentation (40%).

Antonio Damasio, a renowned American neuroscientist, once described emotions and feelings as “vital to what human beings really are” (from Damasio’s acceptance speech on receipt of an honorary doctorate conferred by the KU Leuven in 2013). This ties in nicely with what he wrote in his (1994) book on emotion, reason and the human brain, where he termed feelings “the mental events that form the bedrock of our minds”. Notably, sharing feelings and emotions (along with experience and activities) with other persons is unique to the human species (Tomasello et al. 2005). Moreover, “the emotional content explains why we live in a world of languages, and not of one single language”, as stated by Nadal (2013) (not the famous tennis player, but just as Spanish historical linguist).

The proseminar is devoted to the study of the relationship between language and emotion (a.k.a. emotion talk) in early English. Emotion talk is famous for its figurativeness and, typically, packed with metaphorical ad metonymic expressions. At our weekly meetings we will try to reach beyond the written word and find out how the native speakers of Old, Middle and Early Modern English understood such concepts as, for example, ANGER, SHAME, PRIDE or JOY.

This class examines the major forms of variation in present-day North American English (NAE), including phonological, morphological, and lexical variables; the historical evolution of NAE dialects, including variation and dialect diversity in earlier NAE records; and the relation of NAE dialects to those of the British Isles and the rest of the English-speaking world. We will survey the range of methods that have been used in the study NAE, from old-fashioned lexical inquiries, to the questionnaires of Hans Kurath, to the pioneering sociolinguistic fieldwork of William Labov and his colleagues in the 1960s, to the 1990s Telephone Survey and resulting Atlas of North American English.Other topics to be discussed include the relation between traditional dialect geography and modern dialectology in the North American context; similarities and differences between the dialect geography of the Old and New Worlds; the structure and history of African American English; and the intersection of geography with other sociolinguistic variables, including social class, age, gender, and especially ethnicity and race. Finally, we will discuss the question of “General American” and “broadcast standard”, and the practical problems of describing and teaching a standard American English in the world today.

This proseminar is aimed at students interested in contemporary British culture and will provide an introductory survey of how Wales has been portrayed in film by British and American cinematographers. The main focus of the discussion will be the misrepresentation of Wales and how it transformed during the so-called Cool Cymru period in the 1990s. The main films under discussion are How Green Was My Valley (1941, dir. John Ford), Hedd Wyn (1992, dir. Paul Turner), Twin Town (1997, dir. Kevin Allen), The House of America (1997, dir. Marc Evans), Very Annie Mary (2009, dir. Sara Sugarman). In order to complete the course the participants will be required to attend the classes, complete all reading assignments, actively participate in class discussions, write one review of a chosen film, and pass a semester test.

Selected bibliography:
Berry, David. 1994. Wales and the Cinema. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.
Blandford, Steve (ed.). 2000. Wales on Screen. Bridgend: Seren Books.
McLoone, Martin. 2001. “Challenging colonial traditions. British Cinema in the Celtic Fringe”, Cineaste XXVI 4, pp. 51-54
Woodward, Kate. 2006. “Traditions and transformations: Film in Wales during the 1990s”, North American Journal of Welsh Studies 6(1), pp. 48-64.
Woodward, Kate. 2012. “The Desert and the dream: Film in Wales since 2000”, Journal of British Cinema and Television 9.3, pp. 419-435

The main issues are: the nature of scientific knowledge and critical thinking, the process of locating and reading sources, the problems of defining and describing, the differences between observation and experimentation, the logic of hypothesizing and inferring, the nature of explanation, the conduct of scientific criticism, and the practicalities of thesis research and writing. The course mainly relies on students' questioning attitude and active participation. Passing final multiple-choice test is required for course completion.
More: http://wa.amu.edu.pl/~swlodek/sem_meth.htm.

Phonotactics investigates permissible sound combinations in a language. Polish allows for as many as 4 consonants word-initially, 6 consonants word-medially, and 5 consonants word-finally. Moreover, sandhi phenomena allow up to 11 consonants. The phonotactic inventory of English is much less impressive, both in terms of size and the content of clusters.
  This seminar aims to give you an insight into the phonotactics of Polish and English. The course will begin with the overview and comparison of phonotactic possibilities in the aforementioned languages, the influence of morphology on the size and the content of clusters, as well as frequency effects. Subsequently, we will discuss the behavior of clusters in different fields of external evidence such as first language acquisition, second language acquisition, as well as casual speech processes.
  In order to complete the course, the participant will be required to attend classes, complete all reading assignments, actively participate in class discussions, prepare oral presentations as well as pass a semester test.

Selected references:
Bargiełówna, M. 1950. “Grupy fonemów spółgłoskowych współczesnej polszczyzny kulturalnej”, Biuletyn Polskiego Towarzystwa Językoznawczego 10: 1-25. Kraków.
Bybee, Joan. 2003. Phonology and language use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dobrogowska, Katarzyna. 1992. “Word initial and word final consonant clusters in Polish popular science text and in artistic prose”, Studia Phonetica Posnaniensia 3: 47-121. Poznań: Adam Mickiewicz University Press.
Dressler, Wolfgang U. and Katarzyna Dziubalska-Kołaczyk. 2006. “Proposing Morphonotactics”, Rivista di Linguistica 18.2: 249-266.
Dunaj, Bogusław. 1985. Grupy spółgłoskowe współczesnej polszczyzny mówionej. Warszawa: Polska Akademia Nauk.
Dziubalska-Kołaczyk, Katarzyna.2009. NP extension: B&B phonotactics. PSiCL 45 (1), 55-71.
Cruttenden, Alan. 2014. An Introduction to the Pronunciation of English. (8th edition). London: Routledge
Madelska, Liliana. 2005. Słownik wariantywności fonetycznej współczesnej polszczyzny. Kraków: Collegium Columbinum.
Milewski, Stanisław. 2005. “Grupy spółgłoskowe w języku mówionym dzieci przedszkolnym”. Logopeda 1(1): 5- 32.
Schreier, Daniel. 2005. Consonant change in English worldwide: Synchrony meets diachrony. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.
Selkirk, Elisabeth. 1984. “On the major class features and the syllable theory”, in: Mark Aronoff and Richard T. Oehrle (eds.) Language sound structure. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Shockey, Linda. 2003. The Sound Pattern of Spoken English. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Trnka, Bohumil. 1966. A phonological analysis of present-day standard English. Alabama: University of  Alabama Press.

This proseminar constitutes a gentle introduction to lexicology, that is, to the scientific study of words. After defining our object of study – the notions of word and word meaning - we shall go on to examine the various relations that bind words together into lexical networks. The most well-known among them are synonymy and antonymy, but the whole picture is somewhat more complicated and much more interesting. We shall look at how lexical relations come into being, what purpose(s) they serve, and – briefly – at the evidence for their being stored in our minds. We shall also try to assess how well lexical relations are represented in dictionaries of different types. It may thus be a good idea to take this course if you also intend to participate in a proseminar on lexicography (the order in which the courses are taken does not matter). Of course, all students are welcome, irrespective of what other proseminars they choose.

Credits will be given on the basis of class attendance, taking part in discussion of the assigned readings, and doing a bit homework, the aim of which will be to discover the network of relations relevant to a lexical item of your choice.

Selected Readings
Jones, Steven et al. 2012. Antonyms in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chapter 1.
Moon, Rosamund. 2013. “Braving synonymy: From data to dictionary”. International Journal of Lexicography 26 (3): 260-278.
Murphy, Lynne. 2010. Lexical meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chapter 1,2,5,6.

This proseminar will explore the following two main fields of enquiry: 1. How language reveals, embodies and sustains attitudes to gender 2. How language users speak or write in (different and distinctive) ways that reflect their sex

The first of these is partly historic and bound up with the study of the position of men and women in society. It includes such things as the claim that language is used to control, dominate or patronize. This may be an objective study insofar as it measures or records what happens. But it may also be subjective in that such things as patronizing are determined by the feelings of the supposed victim of such behaviour. The second area of study recalls many discussions of the relative influence of nature and nurture, or of heredity and environment. Both fields of enquiry will be discussed from a critical sociolinguistic angle. Assessment: Mid-semester quiz on Moodle; final class-based test.

Key texts

Deborah Tannen, You Just Don't Understand
David Crystal, Encyclopedia of the English Language, pp. 368-9
Shirley Russell, Grammar, Structure and Style, pp. 169-175
Howard Jackson and Peter Stockwell, An Introduction to the Nature and Functions of Language, pp. 122-126

This proseminar is addressed to students interested in studying literature and culture. The general aim is to familiarise ourselves with contemporary Irish literature, written in the English language, and the most recent Irish movie productions. The classes will be in particular devoted to the representations of Dublin and Belfast as capitals of two separate states, which share not only one island, but also the past, literature and culture.
The starting point for our discussion will be seeing how contemporary Irish writers from both sides of the border use the trope of the city to comment on the most current issues concerning The Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. The treatment of the motifs, which appear in the prose analysed, will be compared with the poetic and the “camera” eyes. By looking at different representations of the city, you will have an opportunity to get acquainted with a broader picture of contemporary Ireland - an island encompassing two countries.

The seminar will also include a project called ‘City - theory and representation’, during which students will be familiarised with three main theoretical approaches towards the concept of the city, in order to use them as an inspiration for presenting your own creative interpretation of the urban space of Poznań. The project will thus allow the students to look at the city from a new angle and check how theory may be applied to everyday life.  Moreover, the participants of the supplementary seminar will have an opportunity to meet one of the most prominent Northern Irish poets, Paul Muldoon, and conduct an interview for the purpose of the project.   
Credit requirements include reading the assigned texts and actively participating in the class discussions; taking part in the project, and writing an essay, which is to summarize the discussions conducted during the proseminar.  

Selected bibliography:

Bardon, Jonathan. 1982. Belfast. An illustrated history. Dundonald: The Blackstaff Press.
Benjamin, Walter. [1928] 2009. One-way street and other writings, (Translated by J.A. Underwood.) London: Penguin Books.
Brewster, Scott, Virginia Crossman, Fiona Becket and David Alderson (eds.) (1999). Ireland in proximity. History, gender, space. London and New York: Routledge. 
Brewster, Scott and Michael Parker (eds.) 2009. Irish literature since 1990. Diverse voices. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Foster, John Wilson (ed.), The Cambridge companion to the Irish novel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
de Certeau, Michel. 1984. The practice of everyday life. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Genette, Gerard. 1997. Palimpsests. Literature in the second degree. Trans. Channa Newman and Claude Doubinsky. Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press.

For decades psycholinguists have been trying to uncover the mysteries of the human mind with respect to language. During this proseminar we will look into the results of their research as we will be exploring the processes taking place in our minds and brains when we use language. Topics to be discussed include the mental lexicon (the human word store), processes related to speech perception and production, visual word recognition (essential for reading) as well as mental underpinnings of writing. We will also devote some time to issues related to language acquisition and processing in bilinguals and multilinguals. Class discussions will be based on assigned texts complemented by practical tasks and videos.  Participants of this course will be expected to read the assigned material for each class, actively participate in class discussions as well as prepare one presentation on an assigned topic.

References:
Aitchison, Jean. 2011. The articulate mammal: an introduction to psycholinguistics. London; New York: Routledge.
Aitchison, Jean. 2012. Words in the mind: An introduction to the mental lexicon. Oxford: John Wiley and Sons Ltd.
Ferna´ndez, Eva M & Helen Smith Cairns. 2011. Fundamentals of psycholinguistics. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.
Field, John. 2005. Language and the mind. (Language Workbooks). London; New York: Routledge.
Groot, Annette M. B. De. 2010. Language and Cognition in Bilinguals and Multilinguals: An Introduction. Psychology Press.
Sedivy, J. 2014. Language in mind: an introduction to psycholinguistics (First Edition.). Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates, Inc.
Warren, P. 2013. Introducing psycholinguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

This course will comprise readings about colonisation in Ireland in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Students will become familiar with the contours of the English relationship to Ireland in this period and will study the language of colonialism, reading works by Edmund Spenser, Barnaby Rich, John Davies, Roger Boyle, earl of Orrery, and others about Ireland. They will study these works against the background of bloody endeavour, war, massacre and plantation in the Irish kingdom. Continuing into the seventeenth century, they will learn about the evolving contours of colonisation in Ireland as English endeavour in the country was joined by that of the Scots and different communities in Ireland were targeted for dispossession of property. They will study seventeenth-century war and the language of distrust that developed between planter and native in Ireland, culminating in the War of the Two Kings, during which Franco-Dutch rivalry became manifest on Irish soil.

The seminar aims to respond to the still growing fascination with Victorian literature and culture evident in neo-Victorian literature, films and even fashion. It will concentrate on Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White (1860), which will be treated as a source of information on Victorian culture and become a pretext for analyzing its different aspects. I propose an experiment which will consist in reading the novel in parts, each becoming a point of departure for discussing an aspect of Victorian culture, ranging from the Victorian laws concerning women, legitimacy, inheritance, Victorian sensationalism, the construction of insanity, to realism in fiction. This is why the reading of the novel will be accompanied by other materials, including but not limited to literary and non-literary texts from the period, and films.

The aim of this seminar is to improve students’ knowledge of Victorian literature and culture, to expose the all too frequent stereotypes and myths about the period and to provide a wider literary and cultural context for Victorian literature. Students will also learn to understand cultural signs and improve their skills of analyzing literary (and non-literary) texts.

Credit requirements include class attendance and active participation in the discussion, reading the assigned texts, writing a short essay and preparing a group project.

Selected bibliography:
Altick, Richard D. 1991. The presence of the present: Topics of the day in the Victorian novel. Columbus: Ohio State University Press.
Collins, Wilkie. [1860] 1994. The Woman in White. London: Penguin Books.
Langland, Elizabeth. 1995. Nobody’s angels: Middle-class women and domestic ideology in Victorian culture. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Levine, George. 1981. The realist imagination: English fiction from Frankenstein to Lady Chatterley. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Objectives:
The students will learn about the recent research on the needs of our brain for effective functioning. They will experience brain-friendly learning activities to develop FL learning and teaching skills.
    Methods:
The students will prepare presentations on the theoretical issues based on the assigned literature. They will run  workshops using brain-friendly techniques to experience and learn to use them in a FL learning context.
    Course requirements:
Each student will prepare a presentation on the selected topic and run a workshop based on brain-friendly interactive tasks.
    Recommended Literature:
Jensen, Eric. 2005. Teaching with the Brain in Mind. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
MacIntyre, Peter D., Mercer, Sara. 2014. “Introducing positive psychology to SLA”. Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching. Special issue: Positive psychology. 4 (2): 153-172.
Siek-Piskozub, Teresa. 2001. Uczyć się bawiąc. Strategia ludyczna na lekcji języka obcego. Warszawa: PWN.
Siek-Piskozub, Teresa, Wach, Aleksandra 2006. Muzyka i słowa. Rola piosenki w procesie przyswajania języka obcego. Poznań: Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM.