The Humanities Lab: Logic, Discourse and Representation

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Cursusdoel

After completing this course students are able to:
  • demonstrate insight into the main research methods and methodologies used in the humanities
  • make methodological and theoretical choices appropriate to a research problem in the humanities
  • analyse texts, visual materials, and historical sources using tools from critical discourse analysis
  • demonstrate knowledge of the key terms and concepts of logic
  • demonstrate knowledge of the principal propositional operators (negation, conjunction, disjunction, and implication)
  • test the deductive validity of an argument by using truth-tables and truth-trees
Relationship between assessment and learning goals:

1. Portfolio of week 1-5 assignments (40%): this allows students to to demonstrate insight into the main research methods and methodologies used in the humanities (goal 1), make methodological and theoretical choices appropriate to a research problem in the humanities (goal 2), and analyse of texts, visual materials, and historical sources (goal 3).
2. Exam of week 6-10 (40%): this tests students’ knowledge of the key terms and concepts of logic (goal 4), of the principal propositional operators (goal 5) and their capacity to test the deductive validity of an argument by using truth-tables and truth-trees (goal 6).
3. Participation (10%) allows students to practice and present their insight and knowledge in class (goals 1-6)
4. Homework (10%) allows students to submit their work and test their progresses regularly (goals 1-6)

Vakinhoudelijk

'The Humanities Lab: Logic, Discourse and Representation' is mandatory for all humanities students. It can also serve to meet the methodology requirement for social science students who wish to finish tracks in law or political sciences. It can be an elective for other students.

Part 1 – Representation and Critical Discourse Analysis
The first part of this course acquaints students with theories of representation, or how meaning is produced through language – language understood as verbal text and images. It introduces them to multimodal critical discourse analysis (MCDA), a methodology for investigating the relationship between language, power and ideology. MCDA departs from the insight that language choices carry values, establish power relationships, and that these can be analyzed systematically. Students become acquainted with the tools MCDA offers for analyzing text, speech and images, and get the opportunity to apply these tools to various sources they are presented with and have to collect (media texts, political texts, images and historical sources).
Part 2 - Propositional Logic and Discourse
The second five weeks of the course introduces students to basic concepts of logic and pragmatics that can be applied to the interpretation and evaluation of discourse, and provides students with the opportunity to put these concepts into practice. Logic provides formal tools that can distinguish bad arguments from good ones, those that derive a true conclusion from true premises; logic allows us to determine algorithmically whether the premises of an argument support the conclusion. Pragmatics considers the situational context of discourse, including how the knowledge and beliefs of the participants in discourse (speaker/hearer or writer/reader) contribute to the conclusions its participants can draw. The course introduces students to the symbolism and concepts of propositional logic, to techniques that can demonstrate the validity of arguments, and to pragmatic considerations that can influence the effectiveness of arguments in discourse. Students will become familiar with the logical relations that can exist between statements, with logical proofs, as well as some basic tools of pragmatic analysis.

Format
The format of the first part of the course will largely be based on the concept of “learning by doing”. Students will be introduced to multimodal critical discourse analysis as an analytical tool for textual and visual analysis and practice their analytical skills in individual assignments which will be discussed in class. The assignments will be part of a portfolio that the student has to hand in at the end of the course. 1-hour lectures, in-class exercises, seminars, presentations.
In part two, students will be introduced to a new topic in Propositional Logic every week, and will be given the opportunity to practice it in class, where they will receive immediate feedback from the instructor. During week 10, students will sit in an in-class exam where they will be asked to solve a number of exercises similar in format and complexity to those practiced in class.
Directly following this 5 ECTS course, students continue in one of the separate 5 week course modules (2,5 ECTS). Separate outlines are available for these course modules:
UCACCMET2E: Predicate Logic
UCACCMET2G Stylistics
UCACCMET2L Community Engaged Research in the Caribbean
UCACCMET2M Power, Positionality & Self-Reflexivity

Though they follow the Humanities Lab, these modules also count towards the SSC methodology requirement. Priority placement for MET25 or other student groups.

Werkvormen

UCU course

Toetsing

Participation

Verplicht | Weging 10% | ECTS 0,5

Portfolio

Verplicht | Weging 40% | ECTS 2

Exam

Verplicht | Weging 40% | ECTS 2

Homework

Verplicht | Weging 10% | ECTS 0,5

*midterm FEEDBACK*

Niet verplicht

Ingangseisen en voorkennis

Voertalen

  • Engels

Competenties

  • Debatteren / discoursanalyse
  • Interdisciplinariteit
  • Kritisch lezen
  • Presenteren
  • Samenwerken

Cursusmomenten

Gerelateerde studies

Tentamens

Er is geen tentamenrooster beschikbaar voor deze cursus

Verplicht materiaal

Materiaal Omschrijving
BOEK David Machin and Andrea Mayr, How to Do Critical Discourse Analysis: A Multimodal Introduction. London: SAGE Publications, 2012, 236 pp. Ernest Lepore, Sam Cumming, Meaning and Argument: An Introduction to Logic Through Language, 2nd revised edition, Wiley, 2012 (ISBN: 1118390199, 9781118390191). Chapters 1-10

Aanbevolen materiaal

Er is geen informatie over de aanbevolen literatuur bekend

Opmerkingen

Succeeded by a 2,5 EC module (see content) within the same semester (enrollment during semester)

Coördinator

dr. A. Andeweg A.Andeweg@uu.nl

Docenten

dr. A. Andeweg A.Andeweg@uu.nl
dr. J.C. Ballantyne PhD J.C.Ballantyne@uu.nl
dr. N. Korotkova n.korotkova@uu.nl

Inschrijving

Let op: deze cursus is niet toegankelijk voor studenten van andere faculteiten, bijvakkers mogen zich dus niet inschrijven.

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