58102 Language and Discourse

This subject introduces three key communication concepts, develops a thematic study and teaches skills in the medium of sound. The concepts are Discourse, Genre and 'Multimodality'. Through multimodal analysis and practice, students understand communication as combinations of representations, cultural forms and specific communicative resources (verbal and non-verbal, visual and auditory, etc), assembling complex relations of thoughts and feelings. The thematic research explores the different ways in which important social and cultural issues are represented in a range of media. Students extend their learning by experimentation in multimodal writing in different genres, such as 'report', 'story', argument', 'appeal', etc, and they reach out for different audiences with sound practice. The subject equips students with the concepts and methods to reflect critically on their own experience of language phenomena through the issues systematically explored.