Information System of Masaryk University 

Course Information

AJ69011 Text and Discourse Analysis (lecture)

Faculty of Arts
Autumn 2009

Extent and Intensity

1/0/0. 2 credit(s). Recommended Type of Completion: z (credit). Alternate Types of Completion: zk (examination).

Teacher(s)

prof. PhDr. Ludmila Urbanová, CSc. (lecturer)
Mgr. Renata Kamenická, Ph.D. (lecturer)

Supervisor

Jeffrey Alan Vanderziel, B.A.
Department of English and American Studies - Faculty of Arts
Contact Person: Tomáš Hanzálek

Timetable

Mon 11:40–13:15 G32

Prerequisites (in Czech)

( NOW ( AJ69021 Discourse Analysis )) || ( NOW ( PRJ001 Seminar on Text and Discourse Analysis ))

Course Enrollment Limitations

The course is only offered to the students of the study fields the course is directly associated with.

Fields of study the course is directly associated with

there are 16 fields of study the course is directly associated with, display

Course objectives

Students taking the lecture course Text and Discourse Analysis will get introduced to the discipline and will understand its main concepts and be able to apply them in analysis and translation of specific texts. Due to the focus of the Master’s Degree in Translation studies programme within which the course is offered, all work with text will be conceived as preparatory to treating texts within the translatorial profession: students will be able to integrate the discoursal know-how into their translation practice. Students will become competent in analyzing texts in a manner consistent with functional approaches to translation (modern theory of skopos). Another skill students will have internalized and automated will be contrasting tendencies in English and Czech. They will become competent in comparing con/textual parameters of texts and will have increased their sensitivity to differences in genre conventions in different language cultures.

Syllabus

• (1) Course objectives, pathways to achieving them. Course organization instructions: teaching block structuring, requirements placed on students, course completion requirements.
• (2) Concepts “text” and “discourse”, seven standards of textuality, relations between “genre”, “discourse” and “text” (based on Hatim and Mason).
• (3) Functionalist approaches to text: text typologies proposed by Jakobson/Bűhler/Newmark/Reiss, text functions and language functions; Hallidayian theory of language and language functions based on Halliday.
• (4) Register and context of situation; language variation – by user and use; field, tenor and mode of discourse.
• (5) Communication dimension of context/context of situation; application within the skopos theory; text intentionality and acceptability.
• (6) Pragmatic dimension of context, illocutionary structure of text, basic concepts in conversational analysis; Grice’s cooperation principle; inference, relevance.
• (7) Semiotic dimension of context, translator as an intercultural communicator.
• (8) Cohesion and coherence in text and translation.
• (9) Lexical cohesion; collocations. Written and spoken texts.
• (10) Text types: argumentative, expository, instructional, descriptive, narrative.
• (11) Text structure.
• (12) Thematic structure of texts; functional sentence perspective vs. iconicity in language.
• (13) Intertextuality, signals of intertextuality, typology of intertextual reference; text hybridization.

Literature

• BAKER, Mona. In other words : a coursebook on translation. London: Routledge, 1992. x, 304 s. ISBN 0-415-03085-4. info
• BEAUGRANDE, Robert-Alain de and Wolfgang U. DRESSLER. Introduction to text linguistics. 1st publ. London: Longman, 1981. 270 s. : g. ISBN 0-582-55486-1. info
• Discourse analysis. Edited by Gillian Brown - George Yule. 14th ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. xii, 288 s. ISBN 0-521-28475-9. info
• HATIM, B. Communication across cultures :translation theory and contrastive text linguistics. Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1997. xvi, 235 s. ISBN 0-85989-497-5. info
• HOEY, Michael. Textual interaction :an introduction to written discourse analysis. London: Routledge, 2001. ix, 203 s. ISBN 0-415-23169-8. info
• HOFFMANOVÁ, Jana. Stylistika a-- :současná situace stylistiky. 1. vyd. Praha: Trizonia, 1997. 200 s. ISBN 80-85573-67-9. info
• MARTIN, J. R. and David ROSE. Working with discourse :meaning beyond the clause. New York: Continuum, 2003. x, 293 s. ISBN 0-8264-5508-5. info
• HATIM, B. and Ian MASON. Discourse and the translator. London: Longman, 1990. xiv, 258 s. ISBN 0-582-02190-1. info
• NORD, Christiane. Translating as a Purposeful Activity: Fuctionalist Approaches Explained. Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing, 1997. 154 pp. ISBN 1900650029. info
• HALLIDAY, M. A. K. and Ruqaiya HASAN. Cohesion in English. Harlow: Longman, 1976. xv, 374 s. ISBN 0-582-55041-6. info
• YULE, George. Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. xiv, 138 s. ISBN 0-19-437207-3. info

Teaching methods

Lectures outlining the main concepts and research issues dealt with by discourse analysis as a field. At the onset of the course, students will receive a portfolio of texts in Czech and English (supplemented with texts in other target languages in the case of students of translation in combination with other languages) which they will get acquainted with in the beginning of the course and which will be referred to in different contexts throughout the course. Students will be expected to prepare for the lessons throughout the semester; the preparation will consist in analyzing set texts, modifying texts based on set parameters, and searching for texts meeting set parameters. Credits will be granted upon passing a practically oriented written exam.

Assessment methods

Compulsory attendance; regular class preparation is essential (see the annotation). Credits will be granted upon passing a witten practically oriented exam focused on students' ability to apply the acquired conceptual aparatus in text analysis and translation.

Language in which the course is taught

English

Further Comments

Study Materials
The course is taught annually.

The course is also listed under the following terms Autumn 2008, Autumn 2010, Autumn 2011, Autumn 2012, Autumn 2013.

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• Enrollment Statistics (Autumn 2009, recent)
  
• Permalink: https://is.muni.cz/course/phil/autumn2009/AJ69011

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