Language in Context MA

Course structure

The interdisciplinary nature of the course offers you an opportunity to explore language from a range of approaches through studying the Language in Context MA, or through two distinct pathways, giving you three options to choose from:

• Language in Context
• Language in Context (Pragmatics)
• Language in Context (Sociocultural Linguistics) 

Our courses are delivered using learning and teaching strategies that help improve your skills base, such as: group work, seminar and lecture participation, experiential work and data collection, tutorials and online learning environments. 

Language in Context 

Students may wish to choose to explore a general pattern of study through which a range of interdisciplinary links are explored. Language in Context MA offers greater integration of such links, including open choices for dissertation content, and opportunities to study option modules related to language studies, such as creative writing, literacy studies, political philosophy, second language acquisition.

Students can choose from sociocultural modules as well as those that examine linguistic approaches to communication.

Modules

• Dissertation

Choose six modules from:

• Approaches to the Study of Meaning
• Language, Philosophy, Mind
• Language, Culture and Ideology
• Language, Law and the State: The politics of force
• Language of Gender and Sexuality
• Independent Research Project
• Approaches to Analysing Discourse
• Non-Truth-Conditional Meaning: Semantics, Pragmatics and Ineffability
• Analysing Big Data: Quantitative methods in language research
• Modules from other MA programmes across the university

Pragmatics pathway

This pathway focuses on pragmatic, communicative and cognitive theories that grapple with a difficult question of how we communicate and how our mind ‘reads’ intentions behind our communicative acts. We further examine different approaches to semantics (a study of meaning) and pragmatics (a study of language use). 

To complete this pathway, you choose six modules. Your dissertation will also need to reflect the pathway content. Your tutors offer detailed and continuous guidance on how to develop your research ideas in an appropriate way.

Modules

• Dissertation

Options

Choose at least two from:

• Approaches to the Study of Meaning
• Language, Philosophy, Mind
• Non-Truth-Conditional Meaning: Semantics, Pragmatics and Ineffability

Choose four from:

• Language, Culture and Ideology
• Language, Law and the State: The politics of force
• Language of Gender and Sexuality
• Independent Research Project
• Approaches to Analysing Discourse
• Analysing Big Data: Quantitative methods in language research
• Modules from other MA programmes across the university

Sociocultural Linguistics pathway

This pathway centres around the role of language in sociopolitical and socioeconomic contexts. It helps students to explore inequalities both in and through language. The pathway focuses students’ research on examining how those inequalities shape our society and the way in which these inequalities are related to gender, race, sexuality, class; including the way in which our view of the world shapes language policy and planning.

To complete this pathway, you 'll choose six modules. Your dissertation will also need to reflect the pathway content. Your tutors offer detailed and continuous guidance on how to develop your research ideas in an appropriate way.

Modules

• Dissertation

Options

Choose at least two from:

• Language, Law and the State: The politics of force
• Language of Gender and Sexuality
• Approaches to Analysing Discourse
• Analysing Big Data: Quantitative methods in language research

Choose four from:

• Approaches to the Study of Meaning
• Language, Philosophy, Mind
• Language, Culture and Ideology
• Independent Research Project
• Non-Truth-Conditional Meaning: Semantics, Pragmatics and Ineffability
• Modules from other MA programmes across the university

Module content

Approaches to the Study of Meaning
This module gives students the opportunity to examine two views from cognitive science and philosophy on the meaning of words and the role played by words in communication. This exploration involves evaluating how meanings vary according to context, and the relations between word meanings and concepts. You will explore lexical semantics and lexical pragmatics in more depth.

Language, Culture and Ideology 
This module enables you to explore cultural, political and other ideologies and to examine how these are constituted, encoded or endorsed in language. You will have an opportunity to challenge some of the myths, prejudices and perceptions of people and cultures through language. They will compare and contrast these with some more complex, sophisticated and theoretically more formal ideologies that have influenced our societies.

Language, Philosophy, Mind
This module addresses different positions at the centre of the debate between semantics and pragmatics: the balance between the two in the interpretation of utterances, and the question of whether the two are complementary, non-overlapping disciplines. The module focuses predominantly on the Minimalism/Contextualism debate in modern Philosophy of Language, and content is based on the work of Bach, Borg and Recanati.

Non-Truth-Conditional Meaning: Semantics, Pragmatics and Ineffability
This module explores a range of non-truth-conditional phenomena: expressive meaning and paralinguistic features of communication such as interjections and intonation. It explores these phenomena from a range of theoretical perspectives, including speech act semantics, Gricean conventional implicature and Relevance Theory.

Language, Law and the State: The politics of force
When police brutality becomes front-page news, language plays a pivotal role in how interactions between the public, the police and the State are perceived. This has consequences as to how those perceptions influence the narratives both in the courtroom and in the media surrounding those who find themselves on the ‘wrong’ side of the law. This module will draw on examples from around the world to explore the role of the State in criminalisation of protest and social movements, and look at how the questions of justice, democracy and state power are represented in and through language.

Language of Gender and Sexuality
This module develops your understanding of language as it relates to gender and sexuality. Elements of feminist and queer social theories will be drawn upon in order to develop a contemporary model of the relationship between language and (intersectional) social identities that is attentive to the symbolic and material.

Independent Research Project 
This module is designed to give you a unique opportunity to work with a chosen supervisor on a project of your choosing. This will enable you to build on their existing experience and work in a research environment, which will provide opportunities to gain skills in the areas of research collaboration, proposals and project writing, research-led supervision and subject specialisation.

Approaches to Analysing Discourse
This module explores a number of approaches to the analysis of spoken and written discourse and evaluates them critically in relation to a wide array of discourse genres in a variety of media.

Analysing Big Data: Quantitative methods in language research
This module provides the methodological skills for quantitatively analysing and understanding large text datasets. You will identify suitable datasets and find statistically significant language patterns using several different techniques (for example, concordances, collocations, and keywords). You'll learn the importance of each technique and its role by investigating topics that include racism, sexism, violence, and migration. Students will gain valuable transferable and employability skills in using quantitative data analysis software and understanding those results within the broader sociocultural context.

Dissertation 
This project enables you to engage in independent research study, involving critical examination of a research problem, and represents an original contribution to academic debate in a relevant area.

A range of option modules offered across the university enables you to experience postgraduate study in an area not directly related to your subject. Some of those choices are in the areas of creative writing, literacy studies, political philosophy, second language acquisition. For further detail, please contact the course team.

Meet the team

Dr Jelena Timotijevic is the course leader for the Language in Context MA. Her scholarly biography crosses disciplines and boundaries with language and communication in the context of political discourse at the centre of her interest. Jelena has taught at the University of Brighton since 2000.

You can read more about Jelena's research and teaching here.

Other teaching staff on the course

• Chrystie Myketiak
• Tim Wharton
• Mandie Iveson
• Ken Turner

International requirements and visas

We can help you meet our English language or academic entry requirements.

Visas and immigration advice

Course fees

Scholarships, bursaries and loans

We offer a range of scholarships for postgraduate students. Bursaries and loans may also be available to you.

Find out more about postgraduate fees and funding.

What's included

You may have to pay additional costs during your studies. The cost of optional activities is not included in your tuition fee and you will need to meet this cost in addition to your fees. A summary of the costs that you may be expected to pay, and what is included in the fee, while studying a course in the School of Humanities are listed here.

• For a number of courses you will have the opportunity to attend field trips and off-site visits. These are optional and are not required to pass your course but under normal circumstances we would expect a budget of approximately £150 per year will cover the costs of particular trips. The amount spent would be based on location and number of trips taken.
• You will have access to computers and necessary software, however many students choose to buy their own hardware, software and accessories. The amount spent will depend on your individual choices but this expenditure is not essential to pass any of our courses.
• In most cases coursework submissions are electronic but you may wish to print notes and should budget up to £150 per year for printing.
• Course books are available from the university but you may wish to budget up to £200 to buy your own copies.

You can chat with our enquiries team through the Stay in touch panel at the end of this page if you require further information. Or check our finance pages for advice about funding and scholarships, as well as more information about fees and advice on international and island fee-paying status.

Info

The fees listed here are for full-time courses beginning in the academic year 2021–22.

Further tuition fees are payable for each subsequent year of study and are subject to an annual increase of no more than 5% or RPI (whichever is the greater). The annual increase for UK students, who are subject to regulated fees, will increase no more than the statutory maximum fee.

You can find out more about our fees in the university's student contract and tuition fee policy (pdf).

The tuition fee you have to pay depends on a number of factors including the kind of course you take, and whether you study full-time or part-time. If you are studying part-time you will normally be charged on a pro rata basis depending on the number of modules you take.

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