Language and Communication Studies:
Language and Communication Studies is an undergraduate programme which offers students the opportunity to develop a good foundation in linguistic, applied linguistic, and communications theory, and to explore the uses and application of this theory for the language-related professions.
First Year:
| CODE | DESCRIPTION | CREDITS | PREREQUISITES |
| LCS 111 | Language and Communication Studies 111: Introduction to Language and Communication and Society (1st semester) Main Outcomes: •To define and explain key introductory concepts and terms in language, communication and linguistics. • To use these concepts to analyse data. • To collect and analyse a small sample of their own data. • To present their data analysis effectively in a given task. • To critically evaluate selected concepts or topics from a given theoretical perspective. • To critically reflect on the relationship between language and society, especially the role of power. • To reflect on the richness of southern Africa’s linguistic heritage. Main Content: • Communication in context • Approaches to communication • Semiotics • Sociolinguistics • Language families & typologies • Language standardisation • Language contact & ‘languaging’ • Language & identity • Language & branding/ advertising |
15 |
None |
| LCS 121 | Language and Communication Studies 121: Introduction to Language Learning and Design Features of Language (2nd semester) Main Outcomes: • To explain and define key introductory concepts in the study of language as a system (phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax) and language acquisition. • To analyse language as a system using concepts and theories from phonetics, phonology, morphology and syntax. • To use these concepts to describe and explain the universal patterns of first and second language acquisition. • To identify factors that affect second language acquisition and language attrition Main Content: • Phonology, morphology, and syntax as part of the universal system of language and language acquisition. • Transcription and description of speech sounds. • Theories and stages of first language acquisition. • Second language acquisition. • Language attrition. |
15 |
None |
Second Year
| CODE | DESCRIPTION | CREDITS | PREREQUISITES |
| LCS 211 | Language and Communication Studies 211: Communication Studies (1st semester) Main Outcomes: • Examine and analyse the central theoretical issues involved in communication. • Apply models and theories of communication to the complexities of the South African situation. • Critically assess different models of communication and practically evaluate instances of dyadic, group and corporate communication, as well as formal and informal channels of communication flow. Main Content: • Models and theories of communication and their evaluation. • The nature of verbal and non-verbal communication. • Kinds of communication. • An introduction to small and large group communication. • Mass communication and Organisational communication. • Barriers to effective corporate (vertical, horizontal and external) and interpersonal communication |
10 |
LCS 111 & 121 |
| LCS 212 | Language and Communication Studies 212: Functional Grammar (1st semester) Main Outcomes: • Recognize various elements of English grammar. • Explain key concepts of Functional Grammar. • Explain the three metafunctions of language. • Make analyses of texts by showing how form is related to meaning. Main Content: • An introduction to the key elements and metalanguage of Functional Grammar. • Important elements of English grammar (word types, phrase types, clause types. • The interpersonal metafunction. • The experiential metafunction. • The textual metafunction. |
10 |
LCS 111 & 121 |
| LCS 223 | Language and Communication Studies 223: Critical Media Studies (1st semester) Main Outcomes: • Know what the media is and how it developed. • Know how the media functions as a powerful 248 instrument in transferring information, providing entertainment, constructing identities, shaping opinions. • Understand how central language is to the functioning of the media. • Understand the unique nature of media communication, where news producers are removed from a large audience of ‘consumers’ or ‘spectators’. • Understand how language and images interact in the media. • Understand how events are mediated in the media. Students will also be able: • To analyse and interpret newspaper headlines. • To recognize structural patterns of news reporting in the printed media. • To recognise the use of specific devices used in news reports, that disclose the point of view of the writer/publisher. • To identify a ‘controversial press’ and its relation to fair government. Finally, students should be informed readers, listeners, viewers of the media, who can critically participate in media communication of our time. Main Content: • A consideration of the various modes of news media as they have developed in the past century. • A consideration of the functions of the media, processes of news production and news circulation. • A consideration of the various participants in media communication, and the various characterizing features of media reports. • The various voices of producers and newsmakers and how these are articulated, manipulated or represented, are highlighted. Visuals in the printed news are treated as special semiotic devices of the media. |
10 |
LCS 111 & 121 |
| LCS 221 | Language and Communication Studies 221: Cross-cultural Communication (2nd semester) Main Outcomes: • Examine the critical issues in cross-cultural communication from a theoretical and practical point of view with specific reference to the South African situation. • Develop a sensitivity to cross cultural variation in communication and to provide a theoretical framework for interpreting it. • Analyse and evaluate actual communicative encounters in cross-cultural situations. |
10 |
LCS 111 & 121 |
| LCS 222 | Language and Communication Studies 222: Advanced Studies in Design Features (2nd semester) Main Outcomes: • To explain the key concepts contained in this approach to the analysis of language. • To apply grammatical principles contained in the key concepts to a language. • To make grammatical analyses of a language. • To make a comparison between grammatical structures of languages. • To show how languages other than English (Afrikaans and Xhosa) realize the functions of language in their grammatical structures. Main Content: Syntax refers to the analysis of sentence structure. This approach looks at common linguistic elements across language and at areas of difference among different languages. The following areas are in focus: • Word and phrase categories • Tests for phrase structure • Transformations • Variation among language |
10 |
LCS 111 & 121 |
| LCS 213 | Language and Communication Studies 213: Language, Identity and Society (2nd semester) Main Outcomes: • Analyse how language shapes the identities of individuals, groups and communities in a globalising world, using contemporary theories of language and identity. • Explain what is meant by language variation at individual and societal levels. • Describe factors affecting language vitality, maintenance and shift. • Discuss how language attitudes and beliefs are shaped by family history, socialization, education and the media. Main Content: • Contemporary approaches to language and identity. • Social and personal identities in relation to language. • Research methods in Sociolinguistics. • Current and emerging theories of individual and social bi/multilingualism. • Language vitality, maintenance and shift as social constructs. • Language variation. • ‘Glocalization’: language, identity and migration. |
10 |
LCS 111 & 121 |
Third Year
| CODE | DESCRIPTION | CREDITS | PREREQUISITES |
| LCS 311 | Language and Communication Studies 311: Multilingualism (1st semester) Main Outcomes: • Define and explain different conceptions of multilingualism. • Critically reflect on the ways in which language is the most visible sign of social change. • Evaluate existing language policies; • Reflect on the role of multilingualism in the democratic state. • Rethink the effect of globalization and migration on contemporary conceptions of multilingualism. • Critically engage with, and respond to, multilingual, multimodal lecture notes and podcasts. • Elaborate on the richness of their individual multilingual repertoires. Main Content: • Multilingualism and recent developments in Linguistics; • Responses of different eras to multilingualism; • A typology of societal multilingualism; • Individual and family multilingualism revisited; • Multilingualism and democracy; • Challenges of multilingualism in post-colonial African states; • Language Policy; • Late-modern multilingualism; • Mobile communication; • Migration and superdiversity; • Countering globalization – new and remaining barriers. |
10 |
LCS 213 & 3 other 2nd year LCS modules |
| LCS 312 | Language and Communication Studies 312: Research in Language and Communication (1st semester) Main Outcomes • Have an overall understanding of the research process and key research terms. • Understand some of the differences between quantitative and qualitative research. • Be familiar with different research designs and have written a research proposal including a literature review. • Have used observation and/or interviews as research tools. • Have organised and analysed their data and summarised findings. • Have written a coherent research report using appropriate conventions. Main content: • What is research? Research ethics, reading research reports, understanding variables and conceptual and operational definitions. • Qualitative and quantitative research: research questions, research techniques or instruments, reliability and validity. • Developing a research proposal: finding a topic, formulating research questions, doing a literature review, planning methodology. • Carrying out your research: methodology (research design and data collection), data analysis and interpretation, conclusions and recommendations. • Writing your report: organisation of report, coherence, using academic conventions. |
10 |
4 x LCS 2nd year modules |
| LCS 313 | Language and Communication Studies 313: Advanced Studies in Business Communication (1st semester) Main Outcomes: • Examine and analyse critical issues in business and organisational communication from diverse theoretical and practical points of view with specific reference to the South African situation. • Develop and provide a theoretical framework for interpreting interactions and various business and organisational correspondence. • Analyse and evaluate actual business and organisational communicative encounters. • Undertake the process of strategic planning, and develop action plans on how to embark on this process, both of which can be evaluated against theories as well as measurable standards and targets. Main Content: • Critical analysis of business writing and organisational structures (various kinds of business letters, project proposals and reports, etc.), public speaking and presentation skills. • Communication flow in organisations. • Theories of (business) interaction, ethnography of communication, linguistic theory, the cooperative principle and politeness theory and their application to business correspondence and communication in the workplace. |
10 |
LCS 211 and 221 & 2 other LCS 2nd year modules |
| LCS 314 | Language and Communication Studies 314: Advanced Functional Grammar (2nd semester) Main Outcomes: • Realize that grammar is used for the purpose of creating specific kinds of meaning. • Identify the relevant grammatical constituents appropriate for the kind of analysis and interpretation they want to achieve. • Take an extended text and then break it down into analyzable units called clauses, which are called “the hub of the grammar”. • Explain how language is used to enact social relationships (the interpersonal metafunction) and then use the grammatical system of mood, modality and evaluation to analyse texts. • Explain how language is used to construe experience (the experiential metafunction) and then use the system of transitivity to analyse texts. • Explain how language is used to organize a text (the textual metafunction) and then to analyse a text by using the grammatical system of theme and rheme. Main Content: • Constituency: How language is structured for use. • Analysing extended texts by identifying individual clauses. • Interpersonal meanings in texts. • Experiential meaning in texts • Textual meanings in texts. • The grammatical system used for analyzing interpersonal, experiential and textual meanings. |
10 |
LCS 212 (required), LCS 222 (recommended) |
| LCS 321 | Language and Communication Studies 321: Critical Analysis of Texts (2nd semester) Main Outcomes: • Distinguish between concepts of ‘text’, ‘discourse’ and ‘discourse analysis. • Use theories of context to analyse the relationship between text and context. • Analyse how people perform identities in spoken discourse. • Critically analyse the role that power plays in shaping both spoken and written texts. • Critically analyse the way in which texts can be used to manipulate and control. • Apply theories of genre to analyse the generic structure of texts. • Apply theories of intertextuality and indiscursivity to analyse how texts are dialogically related to each other. • Write persuasive and critical essays which analyse a range of spoken and written texts. Main Content: • Discourse • Text and context • Identity and gender • Critical Discourse Analysis • Genre • Intertextuality and interdiscursivity. |
10 |
4 x LCS 2nd year modules |
| LCS 323 | Language and Communication Studies 323: Literacy Studies (2nd semester) Main Outcomes: • Understand international and South African patterns of literacy and the debates on the relationship between literacy and development. • Be familiar with 3 approaches to literacy (skills-based, social practices, transformative) and their implications for curriculum and methodology. • Understand literacies as social practices and analyse associated events and practices. • Understand and be able to analyse interactive approaches to reading, process and product approaches to writing, hypothesis-formation in emergent writing. • Demonstrate increased confidence in their own academic ability and presentation skills. Main Content: • The politics of literacy; literacy and gender; literacy and power; • The relationship between literacy and development; • The social basis of literacy; • Differences between written and spoken language; • How literacy practices vary in different domains of life, such as home, education and work; • Literacies in relation to new technologies; e-literacy; the future of literacy; • Cross-cultural literacy practices; multilingual literacy; second language literacy, multiliteracies. |
10 |
4 x LCS 2nd year modules |
| LCS 325 |
Language and Communication Studies 325: Language Pathology (2nd semester) Language and Communication Studies 325: Language Pathology (2nd semester) Main Outcomes: • Explain key concepts pertaining to the acquisition of language, the structure of the brain and the representation of language in the brain and to the way in which linguistic theory and aphasia are interrelated. • Analyse language in order to identify the features of ‘normal’ language and language development as well as to describe the features of ‘exceptional’ language and language development. • Explain the way in which language breakdown confirms theoretical claims about language. Main Content: • Characteristics and phases in the acquisition of language in ‘unexceptional’ circumstances. • The structure of the brain. • The representation of language in the brain. • Types of language breakdown |
10 | LCS212 & any 3 x LCS 2nd year modules |
* Third-year students: Any four LCS third-year modules. Note: you may take up to 6 LCS third-year modules, but take note of the pre-requisites for certain
Forensic Linguistics:
Forensic Linguistics is only offered in the BA (Law) programme.
First Year
| CODE | DESCRIPTION | CREDITS | PREREQUISITES |
| FGL 111 |
Forensic and General Linguistics 111 Forensic and General Linguistics: An Introduction (1st semester) Main Outcomes: • Define and explain introductory concepts in linguistics/sociolinguistics and forensic linguistics. • Demonstrate a good understanding off the evolution of forensic linguistics as a scientific discipline as well as its interconnectedness with law and other related disciplines. • Explain the legal recognition of multilingualism in the South African Criminal Justice System. • Reflect on the importance of legal language, indigenous languages attitudes and intercultural communication, in relation to the presentation and compilation of evidence in the South African legal context. • Describe the legal/courtroom genres in seeking justice. Main Content: • Forensic and general linguistics/sociolinguistic definitions and terminology. • The historical context of forensic linguistics and its development globally. • Forensic Linguistic issues in multilingual societies and language attitudes. • Languages of record in South African courts as well as the significant role language has within the field of law (Language and the Law/ Forensic Linguistics). • Legal/courtroom genres. |
15 | None |
| FGL 121 |
Forensic and General Linguistics 121 Forensic and General Linguistics: An Introduction II (2nd semster) Main Outcomes: • Discuss diversity and the role of language in a legal system such as South Africa. • Explain the role of expert evidence relating to language in court and describe the strength of evidence presented by expert witnesses. • Analyse language as evidence in criminal investigations and in courtroom discourse. • Identify and discuss the work of Forensic Linguists as well as a wide range of linguistic tools and techniques as utilities in resolving legal matters. Main Content: • Analysis of Intercultural communication and the courtroom discourse, through the use of Forensic Linguistics related theories and contextual examples from real cases. • Role of Forensic Linguist as an expert witness in court. • Language as a semiotic resource and as evidence in criminal investigations and in courtroom discourse. • Selected cases in relation to challenges that require the intervention of Forensic Linguistics expertise. |
15 | FGL111 |
Second Year
| CODE | DESCRIPTION | CREDITS | PREREQUISITES |
| FGL 211 |
Forensic and General Linguistics 211 Authorship Identification (Year) Main Outcomes: • Identify the importance of language of origin as it relates to the compilation of evidence. • Describe the importance and relevance of authorship attribution and identification in criminal investigation. • Identify and describe applicable methods with reference to speaker profiling and identification, and thus understand the potentials and limits of forensic voice identification. • Assess and apply applicable methods with reference to authorship attribution. • Discuss the work of a document analyst of a legal text and the process of analysis. • Describe the linguistic profiling as related to criminal investigation. • Evaluate, select and apply the techniques and methods associated with the analysis of written legal texts during authorship identification. • Practically demonstrate the concept of plagiarism and authorship and analyse and detect strategies used in plagiarism. Main Content: • Language analysis and determination of language of origin. • Authorship attribution and identification: an overview. • Authorship profiling methods. • Speaker profiling, speaker identification. • Document analysis of legal texts and the work of a document analyst. • Linguistic profiling in authorship identification: case studies. • Analytical techniques and methods of written legal texts that are of evidential significance in selected cases of authorship identification or attribution. • Investigative analysis of text: Forensic plagiarism and detection. |
40 | FGL111 & FGL 121 |
Third Year
| CODE | DESCRIPTION | CREDITS | PREREQUISITES |
| FGL 311 |
Forensic and General Linguistics 311 Police Record Construction (Year) Main Outcomes: • Analyse and reflect on context and the complexities of monolingual versus multilingual policies in the Criminal Justice System. • Evaluate the current process of police record construction and sworn statements, particularly within the context of multilingualism. • Identify and describe sworn statements as legal texts and the extent to which they may contribute to a fair trial or unfair trial. • Identify and critically analyse the challenges and anomalies associated with the current model of record construction and the extent to which it may contribute to the miscarriage of justice. • Reflect on the meaning of linguistic human rights and its role in providing access to justice. • Identify and analyse possible flaws associated with questioning techniques in police criminal investigation. • Conduct research into police interviewing and police talk as related to the administration of justice. • Identify and evaluate the gaps in institutional norms and conventions in relation to police interviewing and record construction. • Analyse the potential and limitations of current models of police record construction in the South African Police Service. Main Content: • Historical background of police statement and multilingualism in the Criminal Justice System. • Police interviewing methods. • Police talk and police translation: current model. • Sworn statements and the administration of justice in selected cases. • Interlingual and intralingual translation and construction of a legal text. • Linguistic human rights and linguistic inequalities in the Criminal Justice System. • Questioning techniques in legal discourse. • Anatomy and gravity of a sworn statement. • Power dynamics and asymmetric approach in police record construction. |
40 | FGL211 |
