Pre-requisites

LD814 Structure of Languages or equivalent; or an understanding of grammatical terminology and structure, and permission of the unit coordinator.

Co-requisites

None.

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of this unit, the student will be able to:

• Demonstrate theoretical and practical knowledge and understanding of major concepts and approaches to the analysis of language from pragmatic and discourse perspectives.

• Identify and describe discourse, pragmatic and semantic features of written or spoken text using appropriate terminology.

• Demonstrate an awareness of a range of issues in the understanding and interpretation of a written text.

Unit Description

This unit develops students’ understanding of the use of language in communication through an introduction to semantics and pragmatics. This will increase their awareness of factors affecting language learning and language development as well as enabling them to make informed analyses of narrative discourses in any language.

Topics

• Communication
• Word meaning, including lexical relations and meaning components
• Sentence semantics including thematic roles
• Context and inference
• Cognitive semantics, metaphor, figurative language
• Discourse chunking and charting, genre
• Grounding and information structure
• Clause combinations
• Discourse cohesion and participant reference.

Assessment and Indicative Load

Assessment types include Project, Worksheets, and Major Essay. Indicative study load is 140 hours.

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Unit offerings

Face to face: (Demand based)

Please note

The Unit Offerings listed above are a guide only and the timetable for any year is the final authority. The College may vary offerings based on demand, regulatory requirements, continual improvement processes or other conditions.

This unit may be available in different modes of delivery i.e. online and face-to-face as listed above. The unit content will not differ between these modes of delivery. There will possibly be a difference in the schedule and/or the prescribed assessment tasks, however both will cover and assess the same content.