Styles – Genres – Contexts 3500-JIS-SGK
Modern social remodellings and reconfigurations that have recently ensued from intense cross-cultural contacts and exchange point to the role of discourse as a medium that projects linguistic utterances onto social practice. The textual carriers of these transformations are speech genres and styles, which as generators of meaning signify simultaneously speech activities, subject positions and social relations. They all dynamically produce situated contexts, whose sources can be traced in social actors’ cognitive models, discursively shaping the textual form of communicative events.
The lecture presents the role of genres, styles and contexts, as social institutions, in creating and modifying social life. It shows how texts from various discourse orders constitute and develop specific public domains, such as politics, economy, business, media, education, healthcare, tourism, etc. The genres reflect and mediate cultural processes operating in these fields, including globalization, marketisation or technologisation. Their effects are observed in discursive hybridisation, commodification, conversationalisation or multimodality. Such changes are transmitted by the shifting, relocation and reversal of discursively shaped subject positions. They reconstruct social identities, thus restructuring linguistic styles and communicative perspectives. It will be discussed how these mechanisms run new cultural scripts and action schemas in social relations, and how they dynamically reformulate contextual parameters in view of which social agents interactively negotiate and establish communicative situations.
Type of course
Mode
Prerequisites (description)
Course coordinators
Learning outcomes
K_W01
Has a deep knowledge of the scope and methodology of linguistics, discourse analysis and social semiotics.
K_W03
Knows the terminology of linguistics, discourse analysis and social semiotics at the advanced level.
K_W05
Has a deep knowledge of relations between linguistics, linguistic discourse analysis and social semiotics.
K_W07
Knows advanced methods worked out by linguistics, linguistic discourse analysis and social semiotics which allow to problematise, analyse and interpret phenomena taking place in culture, cross-cultural communication and social discourses.
K_W16
Has a broad knowledge of man as a creator and participant of social and cultural discourses.
K_U05
Can use achievements of contemporary linguistics, linguistic discourse analysis and social semiotics in order to analyse and interpret critically cultural artefacts as well as intellectual and ideological currents.
K_K01
Understands the need to learn throughout one’s whole lifetime, and is ready to undertake 3rd level studies.
K_K02
Is ready to take a job that requires the knowledge of public, specialised and cross-cultural communication, as well as the knowledge of a foreign language and of current social and political processes.
Assessment criteria
written exam (100% of the final grade)
The final grade is based on the coverage of the course material and students’ ability to express themselves in writing.
The condition to approach the exam is participation in the course, with the maximum of 2 absences allowed.
Bibliography
Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1986. Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Dijk, Teun van. 2006. „Discourse, context and cognition”, Discourse Studies 8(1), 159-177.
Dijk, Teun van. 2008. Discourse and context. A sociocognitive approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dijk, Teun van. 2009. Society and discourse. How social contexts influence text and talk. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Duszak Anna, 1998. Tekst, dyskurs, komunikacja międzykulturowa. Warszawa: PWN.
Fairclough, Norman. 2003. Analyzing discourse. Textual analysis for social research. London and New York: Routledge (chapters: 2-4, 9-10).
Gajda, Stanisław, 2008 [1993]. „Gatunkowe wzorce wypowiedzi”, w: D. Ostaszewska & R. Cudak (red). 2008. Polska genologia lingwistyczna.
Goffman, Erving. 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Doubleday Anchor Books.
Halliday, Michael A.K. 1978. Language as social semiotic. The social interpretation of language and meaning. London: Edward Arnold.
Harré, Rom / Luk van Langenhove (red.) 1999. Positioning Theory. Moral Contexts of Intentional Action. Oxford: Blackwell.
Hymes, Dell. 1972. “Models of the interaction of language and social life”, in: John J. Gumperz / Dell Hymes (red.) Directions in Sociolinguistics. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc.
Ostaszewska, Danuta (red.) 2000. Gatunki mowy i ich ewolucja. Tom I-II. Katowice: Wydawnictwo UŚ.
Swales, John. 1990. Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Witosz, Bożenna. 2012. „Badania nad dyskursem we współczesnym językoznawstwie polonistycznym”, w: Analiza Dyskursu. Centrum – peryferie (str. 61-76).
Additional information
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