Language and Society MA - Kingston University

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Language and Society MA About the course Course overview The MA Language and Society provides students with an advanced understanding of language use in society. The programme explores how aspects of everyday language relate to social categorisations, such as class, age, gender and ethnicity; it accounts for the linguistic diversity we encounter at all levels and it displays a commitment to the pursuit of equality and social justice. The MA explores key principles, methods and theories in the interdisciplinary field of sociolinguistics and their application to a range of areas, including intercultural communication, language ideology and discourse, narrative, social interaction and identity, and meaning. The MA is unique in that it allows students to undertake original research within the area of language and society from a sociolinguistic or sociocultural perspective, combining their critical understanding of current theories and debates in the field with their reflection on their own experience as language user in a superdiverse society. The programme is designed for students who have completed a degree in English language, linguistics, sociology or a cognate subject area, as well as those who work in language-related professions (such as teachers, translators and language consultants). The MA programme provides an excellent foundation for students who wish to pursue their postgraduate studies to MPhil/PhD level. What you will study The MA is composed of a mix of core and option modules. Teaching typically takes place over two teaching blocks while the dissertation also takes place over the summer period. The first semester core module Language and Society: Principles and Theory familiarises students with concepts, theories and methodologies central to an advanced study of language as a social phenomenon. The other core module, the Dissertation Project allows students to demonstrate their ability to undertake a sustained piece of independent research on any aspect of the relationship between language and society. In addition to the core modules there are a number of optional modules, including Special Studies which run over two teaching blocks. These modules encourage students to broaden and deepen their knowledge and understanding of aspects of language and society and develop further their research skills with reference to the specific topics being taught. Topics you will explore include language variation and change, bi/multilingualism, standard and non-standard varieties (with specific reference to English), world Englishes, language and ethnicity, intercultural discourse and interaction, public, media and political discourses, digital communication, the pragmatics of communication, language and emotion, narrative, voice and identity. MA Language and Society students will also have the opportunity to study modules offered by related postgraduate programmes in the Faculty. Careers By the end of the programme, students will have developed solid theoretical knowledge in a range of theoretical traditions within sociolinguistics, as well as an advanced competence in qualitative research methods for the study of language and society. In addition, students will have gained a range of skills desirable to employers, such as strong communication and presentation skills, critical thinking skills, self-management, meticulousness in writing and editing work, the ability to reflect on one’s own work, the ability to write for particular purposes and audiences, and the ability to work constructively with others. Graduates from this course can pursue any of the following career paths: • Language teaching, including EFL • Publishing and editing • Journalism • Social work • Language policy and planning (including education) • Advertising and marketing • Arts management • New media and communications For those interested in further research, the course provides an excellent foundation for MPhil/PhD-level study in related fields. Support In addition to structured teaching, guidance and support is available throughout the year through the provision of specific pre-set office hours, where you can meet and discuss your work with members of the teaching staff. Further academic support is provided by the Faculty’s Centre for Academic Skills and Employability (CASE). You will also be allocated a personal tutor who acts as a regular point of contact to address any academic or pastoral issues that arise. Special features Language and Society MA offers: • interdisciplinary study of topics within and across the fields of linguistics and applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, pragmatics, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, (new) media and communication; • practice in researching aspects of language in society, with a specialisation in ethnographic and qualitative research methods; • an opportunity to critically engage with current theories in the field of sociolinguistics as well as debates in public domains ; • a mix of core and option modules to broaden and develop specific areas of expertise within the subfield of language and society; • a personal tutor scheme to support and guide students throughout their time on the programme by monitoring their progress and helping to identify individual needs; • employability skills embedded and interwoven throughout the curriculum to develop a set of achievements – skills, understandings and personal attributes desirable to an employer and allowing students to form a clearer idea of future career possibilities and aspirations; and • the opportunity for students to draw and reflect on their own experiences as a language user in an increasingly superdiverse society.
www.kingston.ac.uk/pglanguageandsociety Course content Modules Please note that this list of modules is indicative and not intended to be definitive. Core modules Language and Society: Principles and Theory has two main aims: the first is to (re)familiarise you with terms and concepts central to the advanced study of language as a social phenomenon; the second is to explore the key research methodologies employed to study the complex relationship between language and society, with particular emphasis on qualitative research. Language and Society Dissertation Research Project is designed to allow you to demonstrate your ability to undertake a sustained piece of original, independent research on a range of topics and key issues related to the study of language and society. Option modules Language, Ethnicity and Identity explores the role of language in the construction of ethnic identity in context. This role is manifest both at a group level, where language often functions as the emblem of a community, and at an individual level, where language constitutes a powerful tool in displaying and negotiating an ethnic self. You will engage with issues and topics in this area and be expected to draw on your own experience, whether as bi/ multilingual speaker who can code-switch and code-mix or as a monolingual speaker in a multilingual society. Discourse, Power and Inequality examines issues of discourse, power and inequality following critical perspectives that have emerged from the study of discourse in social life and the study of talk in interaction. It looks at the way differential power relations manifest themselves in language and discourse and their implications for the production and reproduction of social inequalities based on one’s cultural background or social positionality. Principles of Intercultural Communication will familiarise you with cultural and linguistic theories useful for the systematic study of intercultural encounters in global and local contexts and engage with topics such as: intercultural interactions, advertising across cultures, intercultural communication in literature, as well as concepts such as essentialism, otherisation, stereotyping and language and culture shock. Political Communication, Advocacy and Campaigning explores the dynamic relationship between media, public opinion and public policy. You will examine different ways of making sense of the relationship between the state, the public and the media; different approaches to struggles over policy; and different ways to assess what influence media and policymakers have on each other. You will then go on to explore struggles over how politics and policies are communicated. Language description, materials and methods describes the nature of language and, in particular, explores how the systems of grammar, lexis, phonology and discourse underlie language. You will be given the opportunity to write your own materials and so understand the processes, production and adaptation of materials to language learning contexts. This module also provides an overarching perspective on how materials relate to language learning, syllabus design, teaching approaches and research. A unique feature of this module is that it is coupled with micro-teaching and class observations. Special Study: Narrative looks at narrative storytelling in both fictional and real life stories. You will explore concepts within narratology to understand the nature, form and function of narratives. You will also look at the common or universal characteristics of narrative storytelling as well as differences and find out how it is that we are able to comprehend, memorise and produce stories. Topics include narrative structure, characterisation, narration and disnarration, narrative beginnings, the narrator as witness, children’s narratives and fairytales, and narratives in the media (eg newspapers, blogs) such as those following major world events. Special Study: Language and Emotion examines emotional expression, communication and performance in and through language, drawing on concepts and frameworks from linguistic anthropology, sociocultural linguistics and sociolinguistics. You will consider how representations of emotion in literature, film, the media and advertising, and everyday discourses shape structures of feeling, and will conduct in-depth studies of emotion as manifest in situated linguistic and sociocultural activities. Special Study: Meaning considers work in the philosophy of language on what it means to ‘mean’ something and work in the domain of pragmatics and linguistic semantics that suggest a distinction between the contextdependent meaning inherent in language-in-use and context-independent meaning. You will study how different linguistic elements interact with the discourse context to contribute to the communicative act, and also consider the role played by extra-linguistic aspects of communication such as facial expression, gesture and body language. (Special Study options will run subject to student numbers.) Research areas The MA in Language and Society is unique in its structure, which is designed to provide you with a grounding in and familiarity with a range of different research traditions, and then lead you to the systematic exploration of one or more domains of research: • The sociolinguistic domain – drawing on variationist andinteractional approaches to sociolinguistics, with a primary focus on language varieties and discourses, ethnicity and identity, power and inequality • The sociocultural domain – informed by cultural and anthropological perspectives of the study of language, exploring, amongst others, the performance of language, intercultural communication and new literacies Student feedback “The overall curriculum of the MA programme is interesting and relevant to society at large. Students taking such a variety of modules in a structured programme should emerge with enhanced insights into the role of language in society and to the individual, and an ability to reflect critically on how particular uses of language are positioning individuals and groups.” (February, 2013) Special Study: Discourse and Social Media explores discourse aspects of social media in a globalising world, drawing on theories and methodologies developed in linguistics, sociolinguistics, and linguistic anthropology. You will have the opportunity to research language and communication in a range of social media, including social networking sites such as Facebook, media sharing sites like YouTube and Flickr, wikis, and other sites of (micro)blogging such as Twitter.
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