Tovar, Sol

Currently, there are numerous varieties of the English language spoken worldwide. Among them, British and American English stand out due to America’s and Britain’s historical colonial influence, their global economic and cultural dominance, and the widespread use of these varieties in media and international communication, being widely favored by foreign learners and English teachers.

Despite ultimately originating from the same linguistic roots, these varieties exhibit significant differences across various aspects such as phonology, vocabulary, grammar, spelling, punctuation, and pragmatics. This course will explore these distinctions, exploring not only the standard norms but also some non-standard features of these varieties.

General Requirements:

• Weekly assignments
• Active participation in class discussions
• Oral presentation
• Final written task (BA/LA)

In addition to the general requirements, MA students will work on:

• The production of a scientific poster.
• A term paper expanding on the topic of the poster (only for module ELG-M4).

This course is part of the Master’s Programme in English Linguistics and restricted to students from that course. It is intended to provide first-hand experience and critical discussion of seminal works of 20th century linguistic theory and methodology, covering the classical texts of different schools of modern linguistics as well as more recent studies relevant to the ongoing research at our Department.

Readings
All readings are compulsory and will be made available on GRIPS.

Requirements
Two oral presentations
Handout (max. 2 pages)
Preparation and participation
Essay on one of the readings (2,000 words to be submitted by 31 August 2024)

Linguistics certainly has its theoretical, even philosophical side, but it also offers a practical toolkit of notions and definitions that enable informed users to analyse and savour a language that less informed users merely speak. In addition to recapitulating and practising the more general and historical contents of lecture 35702, this seminar will show how the categories and terminologies introduced there can be profitably applied to the sounds, word forms, and syntactic structures of the English language.

Course requirements: regular attendance, active participation, completion of written exercises.