Last updated by mjekiel on 2021-01-14. Originally submitted by mjekiel on 2020-10-02.
1MA theme seminars: winter term 2020/2021
The descriptions are sorted by the teachers' surnames.
dr Stan Breckenridge
prof. dr hab. Roman Kopytko
dr hab. Elżbieta Wąsik, prof. UAM
As geographical and social boundaries were being reassessed, so were people, class, economic, and political limits. Younger citizens were becoming a force to be reckoned with, as they not only were concerned with their own plight, but that of others as well. In unprecedented ways, America’s white youth began to explore the black community through its music in the 1940s, and issues of class and civil liberties were being felt in unprecedented ways. Black and white teens were reassessing their perceptions of race as perspectives of race and color taught by their parents took a back seat. Exposure to a heightened awareness of racism for them during the 1950s, fueled inquiries regarding the morality of social and physical segregation strictly on the basis of color. For many blacks, it became paramount to participate in activities that raised issues of equality and justice, not only by listening to rhetorical affirmations made from concerned whites, but also through legislative actions that would affect them positively. By the 1960s, these legislative acts, social and civil commentaries, and other heartfelt and “soulful” concerns were the inspiration for what became known as “soul music.” This course examines the lyrical, musical, and social aspects of soul music during the 1960s within the context of the Civil Rights Movement.
Bibliography:
Breckenridge, Stan L. (2016). Popular music in America: Forging the American spirit. Third edition. Iowa: Kendall-Hunt Publications.
Breckenridge, Stan. (2014). African American music for everyone: Including theater, film, and dance. Third edition. Iowa: Kendall Hunt Publications.
Levine, Lawrence W. (2007, first published in 1977). Black culture and Black consciousness: Afro-American folk thought from slavery to freedom. USA: Oxford University Press.
U.S. Library of Congress. Born in slavery: Slave narratives from the Federal Writer’s Project, 1936-1938. Retrieved from https://www.loc.gov/collections/slave-narratives-from-the-federal-writers-project-1936-to-1938/about-this-collection/
This seminar focuses on studying interpersonal communication in a variety of formal and informal social situations in a broad interactional, mental, social and cultural context. The primary disciplines involved in studying social interaction include selected elements linguistic pragmatics and discourse analysis. The basic concepts of these disciplines will be discussed.
Special emphasis will be put on (1) the analysis of factors that influence communicative success versus those that lead to communicative failure in interpersonal communication; (2) the examination of ‘emergent phenomena’ in social interaction, (such as humor, faux pas, embarrassment, face threatening acts, etc., (3) the handling of interpersonal relations in social interaction, and (4) the role of emotions and attitudes in interpersonal relations.
Some selected topics in interpersonal communication worth paying attention to include:
Approaches to politeness and impoliteness analyzed in terms of specific strategies and concepts such as face, respect and deference, face threatening acts, mitigation, and others. Finally some interpersonal issues in their specific contexts, for instance, academic, political or medical will be considered.
Requirements for the course completion are open for negotiations with the students.
Recommended readings:
Culpeper, Jonathan, 2017. The Palgrave handbook of linguistic (im)politeness. London: Palgrave Macmillian.
Hylan, Ken and Brian Paltridge (eds). 2011. Continuum Companion to Discourse Analysis. London: Continuum.
Kopytko, Roman, 2016. Pragmatics and Philosophy: A Critical View. Wydawnictwo Naukowe, UAM – Poznań.
Leech, Geoffrey, 1983. Principles of Pragmatics. New York: Longman.
Miriam A. Locher and Sage L. Graham (eds).2010. Interpersonal Pragmatics. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
Schiffrin, Deborah, 1993. Approaches to Discourse. Oxford: Blackwell.
Verschueren, Jef. 1999. Understanding Pragmatics. London: Arnold.
Language, culture and identity in the age of social and ethnic conflicts
dr hab. Elżbieta Wąsik, prof. UAM
The course is meant for those students who are interested in selected aspects of language use in interpersonal, public, computer-mediated, and mass communication, with reference to both governmental regulations and natural tendencies of language development. It will focus on the issues of personal self-identification of human individuals, such as the sense of their belonging to national, ethnic, religious, cultural, and racial groups. During our classes, we will address the following topics: functional typologies of languages and language varieties in time and space, interlingual and intercultural differences in apprehensions and enactments of commonalties of meanings, bridges and interfaces between contact linguistics and language planning, language policy and language planning in the age of globalization, critical discourse analysis of the research on language policy, the impact of postmodern thought on the theories of national and international language planning, inter-civilizational clashes, language attitudes, stereotypes, and prejudices in language contact situations, linguistic human rights, English as an international and global language.
To receive credits, students should take an active part in the seminars. They are expected to select and to submit individually a presentation of one or two positions related to the topic of the seminar. Regular attendance in the classes is obligatory.
Selected bibliography:
Lock, Andrew, Charles R. Peters eds. 1996/1999. Handbook of Human Symbolic Evolution. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, New York, NY: Oxford University Press / Oxford, UK, and Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.
Phillipson, Robert. 1992. Linguistic Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Phillipson, Robert. 2009. Linguistic Imperialism Continued. London: Routledge.
Wright, Sue. 2004. Language Policy and Language Planning. From Nationalism to Globalisation. Houndmills, New York: Palgrave.
