Communication

This speaking course is aimed at English majors with strong oral English ability. Students who successfully complete the course should be able to enter a British Parliamentary debate in any role and have an appreciation for the fundamental values of political philosophy behind common issues.

This course maps out the contemporary social media landscape. It explores the concepts, practices, and cultures that have emerged through the use of social media, and the issues of contention that have developed in related academic debates. It also situates social media in a historical context, drawing attention to continuities, and disjunctions in how computer-mediated communication interacts with economic, political, and social life.

This course focuses on the structure of arguments. The first part of the skills course takes the step to a strictly formal, almost mathematical approach, to argument analysis and explores basic sentential logic. Sentential logic introduces a simple set of rules and procedures that allows one to test whether an argument is formally valid, i.e. if its structure is correct independent of its content. To test for the validity of an argument in this way, the structure of English sentences is separated from their content by translating the sentences into symbols; afterwards formal rules are applied (by using truth tables and semantic tableaus) to check whether an argument logically works or not. While the first part of the skills training concentrates on skills related to logical reasoning, the second part aims to demonstrate how such skills can be used even if a strictly formal way of argument analysis is not applicable. This is done by introducing the Toulmin model of argumentation. This model goes beyond the basic distinction of premises and conclusions as constituent parts of arguments by distinguishing different functions premises can fulfill. The Toulmin model is more flexible than argumentative analysis based on formal logic. Therefore it can be a powerful tool for specific and sophisticated argumentative analysis. Such analyses are conducted during the course, first on small, simplified academic arguments and afterwards on a larger scale, analyzing an academic paper. Finally, in the final assignment, students are asked to apply the Toulmin model to design an argument themselves.

This course examines different mass media theories and their related conceptual frameworks. Topics covered include: communication as a scientific discipline; mass media and popular culture; mass society and propaganda theories; structuralism, semiotics and the media; theories on long-term effects of media exposure.