New MALAS Seminar, Spring 2020: Linguistics 526 / MALAS 600D Discourse Analysis with Professor Betty Samraj

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Linguistics 526 / MALAS 600D
Discourse Analysis

Professor Betty Samraj, Chair, Department of Linguistics

Course Description

Theories of discourse structure. Text and context. Different frameworks for analyzing written and spoken discourses such as genre analysis, conversation analysis, critical discourse anlaysis, discourse and grammar, speech act theory, and corpus linguistics. Applications of discourse analysis such as cross-cultural misunderstanding and identity construction.  

Prerequisite: LING 420 or 501

Student Learning Outcomes

By the end of the course, students will be able to:

-- discuss concepts such as the relationship between text and context;

-- identify and describe significant patterns in talk and text organization;

-- read critically the literature in discourse analysis;

-- formulate relevant research questions in discourse analysis and collect appropriate data to explore such questions;

-- analyze instances of spoken and written discourse using appropriate methodologies;

-- report in an academic paper analyses of discourse using appropriate conceptual frameworks and

-- demonstrate understanding of the various ways in which the methods and findings of discourse analysis can be used to address real life problems.

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Betty Samraj, Ph.D.

Professor, Department Chair

Dr. Samraj has a Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Michigan, and teaches courses in English for Specific Purposes, Discourse Analysis, Genre Analysis, and ESL methodology, such as ESL Reading and Writing.  Her research interests are in the areas of academic writing, genre analysis, English for Specific Purposes, and Systemic Functional Linguistics.  After 10 years of being office neighbor to Dr. Jean Mark Gawron, she married him, and is now learning about the mysteries of computational linguistics.  She loves eating, hiking, and traveling around the globe.