Corso di laurea magistrale in
Comunicazione e Culture dei media

As the course will be fully taught in English, students should have reached at least an upper intermediate level of English proficiency corresponding to the B2 level of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. Being familiar with media language, text and discourse analysis practices would be much helpful.

The course aims to provide students with the necessary theoretical and practical skills to better understand spoken, written and multimodal forms of media discourse. The lectures and tutorials will help students develop critical reading and understanding of media productions and, when appropriate, link their findings to the possible social, political and ideological attitudes that could be integrated implicitly and explicitly in the language of the media.

By the end of this course, students should be able to:

• Read, analyse, interpret and reflect on various types of media discourse (News reports, opinion articles, advertisements, TV, radio and social network language etc).
• Understand and select appropriate theoretical discourse approaches and methods (Discourse Analysis, Critical Discourse Analysis, Multimodal Discourse Analysis) to study specific types of media discourse.
• Produce oral and written texts where they present and argue about the linguistic and discursive features used in particular media discourse
• Relate discourse features in the media to social, political and ideological beliefs and attitudes.

Lessons will take place in the form of lectures with the support of slides. Students are recommended to attend and take active part in lessons, read specific book parts and do the assigned practical activities.

In case of further need to teach from remote, lessons will be taught through the videoconference platform or will be video recorded then shared on the e-learning platform.

Students will have to make one oral presentation (using slides) and submit one written essay of about 700 words (modalities will be explained in class). Together, these will count as 30% of the final mark. The remaining 70% of the mark consists in a written exam where students will have to analyse a sample of media text and write an essay about it, choosing the most relevant method of analysis and adequate terminology.

The course is entirely taught in English. The course introduces relevant theoretical and practical toolkits to understand how media discourse is created through language. Specific emphasis is put on how meaning is conveyed in the media through language and other semiotic systems and how issues like ideology, gender, ethnicity, identity etc could be decoded in the media discourse.

In the lectures, students will be introduced to the methods and toolkits used in Discourse Analysis, Critical Discourse Analysis and Multimodal Discourse Analysis which will help them acquire the necessary terminology, steps and models to approach the language of the media.

During practice sessions, students will have to analyse selected texts (sometimes also videos and audio recordings) by applying the theoretical notions introduced in the lectures.

Compulsory readings:

Fairclough, N. (1995, 2003) Media discourse. London: Arnold.

Fairclough, N. (2018). Critical discourse analysis: the critical study of language. Routledge.

Van Dijk, T. A. (2008) Discourse and Power. Palgrave Macmillan.

Other helpful references

Specific chapters/sections from this list will be talked about in class

Aitchison, J. and Lewis, D. (eds) (2003) New Media Language. London: Routledge.

Bartlett, T. (2014). Analysing power in language: A practical guide. London: Routledge.

Bell, A. and Garrett, P. (eds) (1998) Approaches to Media Discourse. Oxford: Blackwell.

Carter, R., Goddard, A., Reah, D., Sanger, K. and Bowring, M. (1997) Working with texts: A core introduction to language analysis. Routledge.

Fairclough, N. (2015). Language and power (3^rd ed). Routledge

Fowler, R. (1991). Language in the News: Discourse and Ideology in the Press. London: Routledge.

Machin, D. and Mayr, A. (2012). How to do Critical Discourse Analysis: A Multimodal Introduction. London: Sage.

Richardson, J. (2006). Analysing Newspapers: An Approach from Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Palgrave.

Van Dijk, T. A. (1991) Racism and the Press. London: Routledge.

Van Dijk, T. A. (1997) Discourse as social interaction. Sage Publications.

Van Leeuwen, T. (2008). Discourse and practice: new tools for critical discourse analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Wodak, R. and Meyer, M. (2016). Methods of Critical Discourse Studies (3rd ed). London: Sage.

All students have to enroll using the course registration function. 

Students attending less than 75% of the course will have to submit 2 essays and attend at least 1 office hour meeting.