Advanced English Linguistics

6 ECTS credits
180 h study time

Offer 1 with catalog number 4020165FNR for all students in the 2nd semester at a (F) Master - specialised level.

Semester

2nd semester

Enrollment based on exam contract

Impossible

Grading method

Grading (scale from 0 to 20)

Can retake in second session

Yes

Taught in

English

Faculty

Faculty of Languages & Humanities

Department

Linguistics and Literary Studies

Educational team

Ludovic De Cuypere (course titular)

Activities and contact hours

13 contact hours Lecture
13 contact hours Seminar, Exercises or Practicals
75 contact hours Independent or External Form of Study

Course Content

This course takes the student on a journey to what Roman Jakobson famously called “the essence of language”. We study how the form of a linguistic sign is related to its meaning. Following Ferdinand de Saussure, many linguistic schools of thought maintain that this relationship is inherently arbitrary. There are, however, linguistic signs whose form is directly related to its meaning. Onomatopoeic words, such as cuckoo, are clear examples of this - the form of the word resembles the sound referred to. In contemporary linguistic research, this phenomenon is studied under the name of “iconicity”. Over the past few decades, iconicity has emerged as a fundamental explanatory notion in phonology, morphology and syntax. Using English as the language of study, students learn to understand the semiotic foundations of the concept of iconicity and how iconicity informs the debate about the relationship between language and cognition. The course critically reflects on the empirical evidence for iconicity in English. The course is designed as an activity-based learning course, using micro-teaching and empirical research as its main learning tools.

Course material

Digital course material (Required) : On-line corpora, Ludovic De Cuypere

Additional info

The course is taught in English.

See CANVAS for more information about the practical organization of the course.

Learning Outcomes

Algemene competenties

Upon succesful completion of this course you will be able to:

- explain the notion of iconicity to peers and a lay audience

- provide examples of iconicity in English on a phonological, morphological and syntactic level

- use the proper terminology associated with the debate on iconicity in language (e.g., icon, index, symbol, arbitrary, firstness, secondness, thirdness, similarity)

- critically reflect on the epistemological problems associated with the empirical study of iconicity

- perform an experiment that aims to evaluate the phonological iconicity of English

- analyse the results of this experiment by means of the appropriate statistical analyses

- critically reflect on the results of experiments that aim to evaluate iconicity in language

Grading

The final grade is composed based on the following categories:
LEC Presentation determines 40% of the final mark.
LEC Paper determines 60% of the final mark.

Within the LEC Presentation category, the following assignments need to be completed:

Micro Teaching with a relative weight of 40 which comprises 40% of the final mark.

Within the LEC Paper category, the following assignments need to be completed:

Report with a relative weight of 60 which comprises 60% of the final mark.

Additional info regarding evaluation

Nonattendance

Nonattendance of the micro teaching assignment results in a zero mark.

Second exam session

For the second exam session students are evaluated based on an updated version of the report

COVID 19 Measures

Micro teaching will be done online (via Big Blue Button on CANVAS), in case on campus teaching is not possible.

Allowed unsatisfactory mark

The supplementary Teaching and Examination Regulations of your faculty stipulate whether an allowed unsatisfactory mark for this programme unit is permitted.

Academic context