| CODE | IAL1018 | |||||||||
| TITLE | Communication and Language Theory | |||||||||
| UM LEVEL | 01 - Year 1 in Modular Undergraduate Course | |||||||||
| MQF LEVEL | 5 | |||||||||
| ECTS CREDITS | 4 | |||||||||
| DEPARTMENT | Inclusion and Access to Learning | |||||||||
| DESCRIPTION | Students will become more aware of their identity, their individual characteristics as well as the social groups they make part of, and how these support them or hinder them in their own communication and mediation processes. They will explore how some of these limitations are connected to group identities that may transcend cultural boundaries, and which have common experiences and limitations. The role of race, gender, religion and class in group identity will be explored, so students can appreciate the role of group identities and its impact on cultural mediation work. Reception Theory will be widely discussed, focusing on communication as a negotiation between the sender, the message and the receiver. The communicator encodes a message with meaning while the recipients take the meaning from the message and decode it. The message can thus be interpreted by different people in different ways, and culture plays a very important role in this. Students will familiarise themselves with issues related to cross-cultural pragmatics and the correct use of language to avoid communication breakdown. Topics discussed will also include pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic failure, the Cooperative Principle, Brown and Levinson's politeness theory, speech acts and face threatening acts. Study-Unit Aims: - To help students develop awareness and appreciate their own and others’ personal and group identities, and their impact on cross cultural communication - To support students in developing knowledge and skills for addressing cross cultural communication barriers related to identity - To introduce students to some of the most widely known language and cross-cultural communication theories. Learning Outcomes: 1. Knowledge & Understanding: By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to: - Describe the role of individual and group identities on communication and behaviour processes; - Explain how communication barriers can be addressed using social identity theories; - Describe and critically appraise, foundation theories of communication, pragmatics and politeness; - Analyse and decode messages effectively. 2. Skills: By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to: - Demonstrate how personal resources can be used to communicate and negotiate more effectively with different people; - Demonstrate how they can manage cultural and social barriers in order to ensure effective communication in cultural mediation; - Employ communication skills depending on the scope of their message and the feedback they receive by the receiver; - Establish if and to what extent they are being understood by others and adjust their communication styles accordingly. Main Text/s and any supplementary readings: Main Texts: - Jenkins, R. (2008). Social identity: Key ideas (3rd. ed.) New York: Routledge. - Spencer-Oatey, H. (2008). Culturally Speaking : Culture, Communication and Politeness Theory. London:Bloomsbury Publishing. Supplementary Readings: - Kotthoff, H. & Spencer-Oatey, H. (2009). Handbook of Intercultural Communication. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. |
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| STUDY-UNIT TYPE | Lecture and Independent Study | |||||||||
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| LECTURER/S | Zanya Marcelle Bugre Phyllisienne Gauci (Co-ord.) William Grech |
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The University makes every effort to ensure that the published Courses Plans, Programmes of Study and Study-Unit information are complete and up-to-date at the time of publication. The University reserves the right to make changes in case errors are detected after publication.
The availability of optional units may be subject to timetabling constraints. Units not attracting a sufficient number of registrations may be withdrawn without notice. It should be noted that all the information in the description above applies to study-units available during the academic year 2024/5. It may be subject to change in subsequent years. |
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