EKIS407 Language and Social Media (5 cr)

Open the course unit brochure on Sisu

Study level:

Advanced studies

Grading scale:

0-5

Language:

English

Responsible organisation:

Department of Language and Communication Studies

Curriculum periods:

2017-2018, 2018-2019, 2019-2020

Description

Content

• Defining key concepts: ‘Language’; ‘Social media’
• Sociolinguistics, complexity and mobilities in social media
• Analysis of language use on social media
• Doing ethnographic research on social media
• Doing multimodal analysis of social media.
• Analysing circulation in social media: Entextualization and resemiotization
• Linguistic heterogeneity in social media discourse
• Language use and the representation of ‘us’ in an interactive context: The case of
discussion forums and chat
• Connectivity and communality in social media
• Language use and multi-semioticity and the representation of the other
• Oral presentations of project papers
• Written versions of project papers

Completion methods

Lectures, readings, class discussions, small-scale group project, course conference, a written report of project (10-12 pages/person)
Attendance policy: 100% attendance is usually expected.

Assessment details

Attendance and participation in discussion 33 %
Group work & presentations 33 %
Final report 33%

Learning outcomes

In this course students will gain an understanding of social media as sites for language use, social action and cultural production and how these activities are increasingly characterized by diversity and translocality. Drawing on sociolinguistics, ethnography, the study of multimodality and discourse studies, it will offer a theoretical and methodological grounding for the analysis social media discourse practice. The students will also have an opportunity to apply the concepts and methods discussed in the course to the analysis of different types of social media, and deepen their expertise in building up a small-scale research project and in reporting on the outcomes of their projects both orally and in writing.

Description of prerequisites

Advanced level students interested in sociolinguistics, discourse studies and applied linguistics

Study materials

Readings available in OPTIMA

Completion methods

Method 1

Select all marked parts

Parts of the completion methods

Unpublished assessment item