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 a range of sociocultural modules as well as those that examine linguistic approaches to communication.
Modules
Choose six modules from:
- Language, Philosophy, Mind
- Approaches to the Study of Meaning
- Pragmatics, Meaning and Truth
- Language in the Law
- Approaches to Analysing Discourse
- Language, Culture and Ideology
- Language of Gender and Sexuality
- Conversation Analysis
- Independent Research Project
- Non-Truth-Conditional Meaning: Semantics, Pragmatics and Ineffability
- Language Policy and Planning
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 will need to choose two core modules, plus four options. 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
Core modules, choose two from:
- Language, Philosophy, Mind
- Pragmatics, Meaning and Truth
- Non-Truth-Conditional Meaning: Semantics, Pragmatics and Ineffability
- Approaches to the Study of Meaning
Options, choose four from:
- Language in the Law
- Approaches to Analysing Discourse
- Language, Culture and Ideology
- Language of Gender and Sexuality
- Conversation Analysis
- Independent Research Project
- Language Policy and Planning
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 will need to choose two core modules, plus four options. 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
Core modules, choose two from:
- Approaches to Analysing Discourse
- Language of Gender and Sexuality
- Conversation Analysis
- Language in the Law
Options, choose four from:
- Language, Philosophy, Mind
- Approaches to the Study of Meaning
- Pragmatics, Meaning and Truth
- Language, Culture and Ideology
- Independent Research Project
- Non-Truth-Conditional Meaning: Semantics, Pragmatics and Ineffability
- Language Policy and Planning
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.
Pragmatics, Meaning and Truth
This module focuses on the work of Paul Grice, his theory of conversation and his theory of meaning. Meaning of words is to be analysed in terms of the beliefs, desires and intentions of communicators. You will examine how this approach has been developed in subsequent work by others.
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 in the Law
This module explores how every area of law involves language. Many legal cases turn on the meaning of words, while certain crimes, such as defamation or assault, can be committed just by saying or writing certain words. In courtrooms and police interviews, language is involved in the interrogation of plaintiffs, defendants and the testimony of witnesses. Looking at language in these legal contexts also raises fundamental questions about linguistic complexity, vagueness, speech act theory, and the semantics-pragmatics interface.
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.
Conversation Analysis
This is a practical module in the exercise of empirical analyses of conversation analysis. You will have the opportunity to observe, reflect upon and analyse cases of pre-recorded, but not yet transcribed, instances of naturally occurring interactional achievements and to examine the ways in which interpretations of talk sequences are context relative and sensitive. These observations and their implications have far-reaching consequences for other levels of linguistic inquiry.
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.
Language Policy and Planning
This module introduces the complex issues concerning interplay between linguistic diversity and language policy and planning. The impact of language planning decisions at local, national and international levels will be addressed with case studies drawn from Britain and elsewhere. You will critically engage with theoretical considerations of language policy and ideology, nationalism, colonialism, language rights, language endangerment, language policies and education as well as exploring the emergent field of linguistic landscapes.
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