2/027 - ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LINGUISTICS II

EXPECTED LEARNING OUTCOMES

The course, designed for second-year students of the Master's Degree in Languages and Intercultural Communication in the Euromediterranean Area (MLC), is aligned with the learning objectives of the program and aims to provide a theoretical and methodological framework for critical discourse analysis from a multimodal perspective. Its goal is to uncover rhetorical and semiotic strategies used in the dissemination of hate, discrimination, and polarization in contemporary media and communicative contexts. The analysis will focus on various domains in which hate speech manifests - such as gender, sexuality, race, disability, religion, and social status - with particular attention to its expressions in digital media and in the visual and verbal representations circulating online. Multimodal texts in English will be examined, with a focus on the linguistic, visual, and pragmatic features that contribute to the construction of ideological oppositions, dehumanization, the representation of otherness, and the legitimization of symbolic and verbal violence. The multimodal critical discourse analysis will explore different Anglophone socio-cultural contexts (with particular attention to the Euro-Mediterranean area considered from a global perspective), in order to show how linguistic and semiotic reflection can not only expose naturalized ideologies and stereotypes, but also identify discursive strategies of resistance, opposition, and transformation. The expected language competence at the end of the course corresponds to an advanced level of English proficiency in complex communicative situations.

UNDERSTANDING AND APPLYING KNOWLEDGE

Students are expected to demonstrate mastery of necessary language skills, strategies and tools for enhancing their problem-solving skills in the interpretation of authentic texts in English. The course aims to develop a critical understanding of the English language that combines pragmatic competence with reflection on language as a specific subject for research. The focus on the discursive components of language proposes to develop, in the same way, linguistic and metalinguistic skills and mastery of the tools of multimodal analysis together with critical discourse analysis applied to different genres and textual types of the English language. Students are therefore expected to demonstrate their ability to apply their language skills to the analysis of the proposed texts and to produce written and oral texts appropriate to the different situations of use. The output language competence corresponds to the advanced level of proficiency in English in complex situations.

FURTHER EXPECTED LEARNING OUTCOMES

- Ability to critically analyse English language texts and to effectively and independently discuss issues, including theoretical issues, arising from the texts proposed during the course.

- Ability to understand and produce text at an advanced level.

- To show autonomy in the comprehension of complex texts, of which the student will have to recognise the explicit and implicit meaning; to be able to produce clear and texts complex in English on complex subjects; to be able to take notes and make an active contribution to the classes.