This course aims at updating and expanding students’ understanding of media and the many ways language and communication dynamics operate across a changed and changing mediascape. Through the lens of applied linguistics, the course introduces students to the characteristics of native online media features such as memes, viral spreads, surveillance and convergent practices. It orients students to how different types of language (verbal and non-verbal) can be combined together to deliver different messages. The course introduces them to the communicative functions of non-verbal language such as images, sounds, music and the language of symbols such as emojis. The course aims as well at helping students understand media and think about it in terms of what media do rather than what they are. Thus, rather than focusing on media as ‘thing’ they are guided to think about it as processes of mediation. Students are then guided to take a similar perspective on language, considering what language does rather than what it is.
Intended Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, students will be able to:
- Define language as meaning-making systems,
- Recognize the fundamental distinction between language structure and the functions of language
- Relate the notion of ‘language and communication’ in Applied Linguistics.
- Recognize how verbal and non-verbal modes of langugage affect the construction and perception of media messages.
- Define how verbal messages can be combined with other modes of communication (emojis, photographs, short video)