Contenu pour l'année 2023-24:

Language, Power, and Society: Unveiling the Dynamics of Communication

Monika Pukli & Stéphane Kostantzer

Course description:

Part 1/ Mme Pukli
The objective of this course is to introduce students to the essential connections between language and power relations within society. Students will engage in critical analysis of socio-political contexts and examine how language both sustains and transforms these contexts. They will explore how specific language usage contributes to the maintenance or alteration of power dynamics. Through reflection and examination, students will gain a deeper understanding of how language influences and shapes society.

Topics covered in this unit may include:

• Language, thought and representation
• Language and politics
• Gender relations
• Language markers and social status
• Language and the media
• Minority languages, language and ethnicity

Part 2/ M Kostanter
This course investigates a selection of theories that have endeavoured each in a different way to lay bare how power games are an inherent part, if not the very essence, of language. These theories cover various aspects of language, among which semantic and syntactic presuppositions, rhetoric, pragmatics and argumentation. The questions that we shall try to answer are the following: how does social interaction influence linguistic options? How do we interact with our own language? Is power gained by using language efficiently or creatively? By stating things or leaving them implicit? Does language reflect our social interactions or does it shape them?

Assessment:
Oral exam
20 minutes, takes place in the course of the semester
Written exam
4 hours, takes place at the end of the semester

Recommended reading:
Mme Pukli
Bucholtz, Mary, & Hall, Kira (2004). “Language and Identity.” In A. Duranti (Ed.), A Companion to Linguistic Anthropology (pp. 369-394). Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Mooney, Annabelle, Stilwell Peccei, Jean, LaBelle, Suzanne, Engøy Henriksen, Berit, Eppler, Eva, Irwin, Anthea, Pichler, Pia, Preece, Siân & Soden, Satori (2011). Language, Society and Power: An Introduction (Third edition). London, New York: Routledge
M Kostantzer
Brown, Penelope and Stephen Levinson. Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1987.
Giles, Howard, et al. "Accommodation theory: communication, context and consequence." In H. Giles, N. Coupland and J. Coupland (eds), Contexts of Accommodation: Development in Applied Sociolinguistics. Paris: Maison des Sciences de l’homme (1991): 1-68.
Grice, Herbert Paul. Studies in the Way of Words. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard UP, 1989.
Kerbrat-Orecchioni, Catherine. Le Discours en interaction. Paris : Armand Colin, 2005.
Viktorovitch Clément. Le Pouvoir rhétorique. Apprendre à convaincre et à décrypter les discours. Paris : Editions du Seuil, 2021.






 

- Acquérir les connaissances de base pour l'analyse de la structure informationelle
- Échanger, débattre en groupe
- Présenter un travail à l’oral et à l’écrit de façon structurée
 

BENVENISTE, Émile, Problèmes de linguistique générale, T. 1 et 2, Paris, Gallimard, 1966 et 1974.
CHOMSKY, Noam, Syntactic Structures, Berlin, New York, Mouton de Gruyter, 1st ed., 1957 (various reprints).
COTTE, Pierre, JOLY, André, O’KELLY, Dairine, GILBERT, Éric, DELMAS, Claude, GIRARD Geneviève, GUÉRON, Jacqueline, Les théories de la grammaire anglaise en France, Paris, Hachette Supérieure, 1993.
HALLIDAY, Michael, An Introduction to Functional Grammar, London, Arnold, 2nd ed., 1994.
CULIOLI, Antoine, Pour une linguistique de l’énonciation, T. 1, Paris, Ophrys, 1990.
FUCHS, Catherine (sous la direction de), La linguistique cognitive, Paris, Ophrys, 2004.
JOSEPH, John, LOVE, Nigel, TAYLOR, Talbot, Landmarks in Linguistic Thought II. The Western Tradition in the Twentieth Century, London and New York, Routledge, 2001.
LYONS, John, Language & Linguistics, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1981. (
SAUSSURE, Ferdinand de, Cours de linguistique générale, Paris, Payot, 1995 (1ère éd., 1916)

CORNISH, Francis, "L'absence de prédication, le topique et le focus: le cas des phrases thétiques", Communication présentée lors du colloque sur "La prédication", CELT, Université de Provence, 4-6 nov 2004.
HUDDLESTON, Rodney and PULLUM, Geoffrey, The Cambridge Grammar of the English language, Cambridge University Press, 2002, chapter 16, « Information packaging ».
LAMBRECHT, Knud, Information structure and sentence form. Topic, focus, and the mental representations of discourse referents, Cambridge Studies in Lin guistics, 1994.
PUCKICA, Jérôme, "Passice constructions in Present-Day English", Groninger Arbeiten Zur Germanistischen Linguistik 49 (December 2009), 215-235.
QUIRK, Randolph, A Grammar of Contemporary English, Longman, 1972, chapter 14, “Focus, Theme and Emphasis”, p. 935-972.
SMITH Carlota, Modes of Discourse. The Local Structure of Texts, Cambridge, 2003 (particularly chapters 8, 9, p. 185-240).