Seminar: Spanish Linguistics

Teacher(s)

De Cock Barbara;

Language

Spanisn

Prerequisites

Solid knowledge of Spanish linguistics and basic knowledge of pragmatics (in Spanish or in other languages). Level B2 for Spanish language.

Main themes

The course will deal with the analysis of a linguistic phenomenon through a multilevel approach (syntax, pragmatics, discourse analysis, semantics, ...). A critical overview of existing theories and descriptions will be elaborated, based on a course reader and subsequent discussions in class. This overview will be combined with a corpus-based analysis of contemporary Spanish data, for which students will have to make and justify methodological choices.

Aims

At the end of this learning unit, the student is able to :
1	Ability to select appropriate methodologies for constituting and treating linguistic corpora, and to problematize a research question while taking into account the relationships between language and context. Ability to analyze spoken and written production in Spanish, while taking into account, historical, regional, social and stylistic variation Awareness of the relationship between theoretical approaches and methodological practice. Understanding and application of the basic methods and techniques for the analysis of linguistic data. Ability to recognize linguistic problems, to critically reflect on common misconceptions of language. Ability to identify linguistic units, the relations among them and processes affecting them.  Ability to distinguish the different levels of linguistic analysis. Ability to identify different types and sources of linguistic and non-linguistic meaning

The contribution of this Teaching Unit to the development and command of the skills and learning outcomes of the programme(s) can be accessed at the end of this sheet, in the section entitled “Programmes/courses offering this Teaching Unit”.

Content

A current-day topic related to on-going research will be analyzed in detail.
This year's topic is "discourse and conflict" in Spanish.

Teaching methods

The course will be organized as a research seminar. Students will have to read various articles at home. This reading will be followed by a discussion in class. Moreover, students will develop a corpus-based case study, for which they will analyze complementary topics and corpora, so as to be able to compare their results at a larger scale. They will present their results and comment on their peers' results.
 

Evaluation methods

The evaluation of this course is based on the discussions in class, the presentations of research results and the discussion of the results of the classmates (e.g. the capacity to ask relevant critical questions and to compare the results of other students with one's own results). By consequence, the evaluation is partially continuous and partially during an oral exam.
For students for whom this course represents 5 credits, the distribution is as follows:
article presentation and participation in the discussions in class (5 points),
oral presentation of an analysis and discussion of the results of the analyses of the other students (10 points), written synthesis (1500-2000 words) of the analysis (5p.).

For students for whom this course represents 10 credits, the distribution is as follows:
article presentation and participation in the discussions in class (4 points), oral presentation of an analysis and discussion of the results of the analyses of the other students (6 points), written synthesis (5000-6000 words) of the analysis (10p.).

Other information

None.

Online resources

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Bibliography

Le portefeuille de lecture sur le sujet de cette année sera disponible sur la page Moodle de ce cours.

Faculty or entity

ROM