(BA) (4-year-programme) - The University of Hong Kong

43language) that normalize and naturalize the views we hold of ourselves and other people. We ask towhat extent we can assume culture to be synonymous with language and nation, and how acts ofintercultural communication are performed or represented in different contexts such as internationalbusiness, marketing, and interpersonal relations.Assessment: 100% coursework.ENGL1034.Language and prejudice (6 credits)Prejudice is defined as “dislike, hostility, or unjust behaviour deriving from preconceived andunfounded opinions” (OED). Social prejudice and discrimination often manifest through language use,and/or attitudes and practice towards language users (who are considered as members of certainsocial/ethnic/gender/age categories), this course examines sociolinguistic case studies of languagediscrimination both locally and internationally.Assessment: 100% coursework.______________________________________________________________________________ENGL1035.Language crimes (6 credits)This course introduces the study of texts through utterances taken from criminal cases. Students willlearn how to apply concepts such as types of meaning and speech acts to analyse the utterances incontext, and formulate critical arguments about their observations.Assessment: 100% coursework.ENGL1036.Meaning and metaphor (6 credits)The course looks at different definitions of metaphor and reviews various approaches and theories thathave been applied to figurative (non-literal) language. It presents the identification and analysis ofmetaphor as a tool in the study of texts of all kinds, and introduces more recent approaches which seethe study of metaphor as a key to understanding human cognition and experience. The course showshow questions about metaphor are at the heart of debates about meaning and interpretation across thehumanities and social sciences, and illustrates the role of metaphor in fundamental ideological andpolitical discussions, concerning for example: social order ('the body politic'), ecology (the earth as aliving being, 'Gaia' theory), economics (the 'market' metaphor), religion (heaven as 'above', God as'father'). A related longstanding intellectual debate concerns whether languages create or embodyparticular culturally-specific world-views. The course equips students to analyze a range of texts interms of metaphor and gives them a grounding in longstanding debates about meaning, interpretationand the relationship of language to reality.Assessment: 100% coursework.ENGL1037.Persuasion (6 credits)This is a course about rhetoric, in which students will explore ways language can be used to convey,reinforce or change ideas. In theory and in textual practice we will work together to understand howpersuasion works in English in a number of different language domains. The course exploresdiscourse relations in writing and speech, through critical analysis and practice of strategies ofpersuasion in some or all of the following domains: academic writing; advertising; the courtroom;polemic and propaganda; literary representation.Assessment: 100% coursework.