https://studiegids.vu.nl/en/courses/2024-2025/L_NCMACIW023As competent language users we are able to distinguish between a political debate, a talk show and a news interview. In most cases, we are also able to discriminate between the language used in a book review, a column or an editorial. When examined in greater detail, the language used in these different communicative environments is actually highly conventionalized. This explains why we recognize these communicative environments when we see them. At the same time, the language features that are constitutive of them, often remain understudied; they represent a black box. This course starts from the idea that it is important to identify how language works and to unpack this black box. We adopt an action-oriented perspective of language stating that language is not neutral nor merely stylistic but designed to fulfill particular communicative functions. If at all, these functions are often only described in terms of informational or persuasive goals. In this course we argue that when we take a closer look at there is much more to see (and say) about how language works. In this course you will learn to make more detailed observations about the communicative goals accomplished by different modes of communication (‘genres’) such as speeches, vlogs, communication campaigns, public debates or news interviews. You will also learn how to identify and analyze the language features that help to fulfill particular communicative purposes. This course enables you to make language conventions explicit in the light of the functions they fulfill, and develop a vocabulary and a set of concepts to do so, based on current research and literature. The learning outcomes for this course are increasingly important for communication experts to be able to recognize, analyze and also actively apply language features that are best fitted to the goals of different types of discourse (spoken, written or visual). At the same time, it also prepares you for managing communicative challenges of professional writers and audiences alike, that are tied to broader societal trends such as fake news, filter bubbles and information overload.The course will increase your abilities as an academically trained communication professional to analyze and make suggestions to improve different types of discourse. You are able to do so based on a firm understanding of the linguistic design of different modes of communication ('genres') and how language is used in different communicative settings to accomplish particular communicative purposes. These are important competencies and theoretically informed skills both for academically trained professional writers, for communication specialists with an interest in the use of multimodal communication, as well as dialogue specialists.There are weekly lectures and a seminar. The lectures are aimed to familiarize yourself with the relevant concepts in the field of genre and communication design, and approaches to study the functions and social actions of different types of discourse. Attending the lectures is highly recommended. In the seminars, we will work with data examples and you will work on (group) assignments and a larger (group) project. Seminars are mandatory.Homework (10%), group assignment (40%) and final exam (50%). Students have to pass their group assignment and exam with minimally a 5.5/10 to pass the course.Course literature (a list of articles and book chapters) will be made available on Canvas.MA students of Communication and Information Studies, Language or Linguistics.This course has seminars, but you cannot self-register for a group until the first week of class.BA degree in communication studies, language, linguistics, or other field relevant to the course content. Knowledge about analyzing texts and spoken interaction is highly recommended.