Pre-requisites

LN514 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:

• Discuss the history, principles and methods of analysing meaning of text.

• Analyse discourse and semantic features of text.

• Determine lexical relationships between words.

• Explain the interplay of mental representations, pragmatic structuring and grammatical structure in discourses.

Unit Description

This unit introduces students to discourse analysis and semantics. They will build on their knowledge and understanding of grammatical structure to explore the relationship between language and meaning. They will develop a basic understanding of semantics and a methodology for analysing and interpreting text to reveal the communicative intent of the speaker/writer. By the end of the unit students should have an understanding of the nature of human communication to inform language learning and translation practice.

Topics

• Communication

• Word meaning, including lexical relations and meaning components

• Sentence semantics including thematic roles

• Spatial reference

• Context and inference

• Cognitive semantics, metaphor, figurative language

• Discourse chunking and charting, genre

• Grounding and information structure

• Clause combinations

• Discourse cohesion and participant reference

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Unit offerings

SILA: (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.