English and drama

Great Ideas about Language

Module code: Q1084
Level 5
15 credits in autumn semester
Teaching method: Lecture, Seminar
Assessment modes: Coursework

This module explores the history of ideas about language from the Enlightenment to the present. Through lectures and seminars we explore the answers to the following: What questions have propelled linguists at different points in history? How have attempts to answer them been influenced by time, place and culture? How do assumptions about language affect what counts as linguistic evidence?

Topics include:

• the birth of linguistics in the shift from diachronic to synchronic studies
• Chomskyan rationalism and innatism
• language and thought
• European structuralism and functionalism
• the cognitive turn and how linguistics might be decolonised.

Module learning outcomes

• Identify and explain key ways in which theories of language can differ.
• Trace a broad history of modern linguistics, from the seeds present in the 18th century to current theories in the 21st and critically question the narrative that presents the history of linguistic ideas as the product of white male western authors.
• Synthesise material from seminar discussions into cogent reports.
• Apply critical thinking skills in order to assess the relevance of different types of linguistic phenomena to particular theoretical approaches.