Aims and assumptions:

The course is meant to give first year students a general idea about how language works in real-life contexts, what communication involves, why it may falter, and how it may be improved. The fundamental assumption of the course is that each message we produce and receive is culturally determined and, therefore, it should be analysed within the framework of its social, intellectual, ideological and historical circumstances. Besides a variety of written texts – literary, theoretical and otherwise – the course focuses on other media and categories of messages that may be used for communication purposes as well as a range of non-verbal strategies of communication.