Assoc. Prof. Dr. Aleksandra Bagasheva

Lectures: 30

ECTS credits: 3

 

The linguistic punctuation of reality

The aim of the course is to introduce students to the basic problems of studying the complex intertwining between culture, language, and the mind and their ultimate culturally informed embodiment. The course fosters in students skills for applying methodologies of qualitative research and ethnographic description. The topics of the course include the discussion of cultural linguistics, cognitive linguistics and their amalgamation in cognitive anthropology.
The course focuses on the problematization of the close relations between mode of
communication and prevalent cultural practices, the language patterns within a language community and their embodied, cognitively motivated nature in contrast with their symbolicity and indexicality. The approach is student-oriented and involves autonomous reading and discussion of papers by key researchers in the field. Students’ progress and achievements are assessed on the basis of individual field research (submitted as a term paper, with the major findings disseminated via an oral presentation). Students who take the course should have a fairly advanced knowledge of basic linguistics and be efficient writers of academic texts. The course is conducted in English.