UCL - French Linguistics III : from words to discourse

[ROM1331]

[45h] 5 credits

This course is taught in the 1st & 2d semester.

Teacher(s): Cédrick Fairon, Anne-Catherine Simon

Language: French

Level: First

Aims
Main themes

Aims

By the end of the course, the student will be able:
- understand and critically situate various theoretical models of the construction and organisation of lexical and discursive units;
- master the main concepts related to the theoretical models examined;
- analyse complex linguistic phenomenon (ex. neology, lexical frozeness, conversations, media discourse), in a way to bring into light linguistic units' contructions and relationships;
- link theoretical model to the way they are drawn upon in various fields (ex. terminology, lexical statistics, computational linguistics, text and interaction analysis, etc.).

Main themes

Part I. (1) Historical approach towards the formation of French lexicon and the development of lexical description tools. (2) Introduction to several theoretical framework for the description of lexical facts. (3) Study of the major lexical phenomenon and their links with other levels of linguistic analysis (morphology, syntax, semantics). Illustration of these phenomenon through specific case studies.

Part II. (1) Study and comparison of the main models of discourse analysis (from French and Anglo-Saxon traditions) at different levels (methods, data, researchers' ideological postures). (2) Application of models to authentic texts and assessment of their forces and weaknesses. (3) Critical reflection on the way each model copes with the problem of discourse interpretation.