The new MA in Discourse Studies at Lancaster builds on our Department's international reputation in discourse studies to offer an innovative programme that studies a range of types of discourse and of ways of analyzing them. This new programme is unique in the UK and beyond, and will be of interest to students in the social sciences or in a range of professions working with written, spoken or multimodal texts. It builds partly on the renowned pioneering work of Norman Fairclough in critical discourse analysis, and of Paul Chilton in cognitively oriented discourse analysis and pragmatics.

The Lancaster Linguistics Department has long been well-known for its distinctive work in pragmatics, stylistics and critical discourse analysis. More recently, collaboration with corpus linguistics, another field for which Lancaster has a high reputation, has led us to develop a unique approach, combining qualitative and quantitative methods. Integrating critical approaches to discourse with notions from cognitive linguistics is another fruitful combination. The chance to draw on this rich range of established work within the Department helps to make the MA in Discourse Studies a very special programme.

These different areas have attracted numerous MA and PhD students in recent years to work at Lancaster with Ruth Wodak (on themes such as 'national identity politics and narratives of the past', 'language and/in politics', 'issues of multilingualism and language policies', 'organizational communication', 'racism and discrimination', and so forth), and with increasingly well-known younger staff such as Veronika Koller, Michal Krzyzanowski and Johnny Unger who specialize in metaphor theory, national and transnational identity politics and multilingualism. The new MA in Discourse Studies bring these interests together into a single programme.

Students on the MA in Discourse Studies will explore discourses in various areas including politics, business and media, and develop skills in a range of analytical methods, such as argumentation theory, conversation analysis or systemic-functional grammar. The scheme paves the way for employment in a broad range of areas, including teaching in the UK and abroad, research, publishing, as well as positions in the media, and more broadly in communications departments within the public and private sectors.

Aims

The programme seeks to provide extensive and up-to-date knowledge and understanding of:

Structure

Core modules: 60 credits - ALL of these must be taken

'Restricted choice' modules: 40 credits must be selected from among these items

ONE module freely chosen: 20 credits

If on registration a student can demonstrate prior adequate coverage of both the content and approach of one of the core modules in the first column, then this can be replaced by up to one further module to be chosen from the second column. It is assumed that this will be an exceptional occurrence, and is at the discretion of the Director of Studies.

The 70% dissertation + 30% coursework candidates must take their 3 courses from the first two columns.

Optional Modules

Modules that are not compulsory or part of a restricted list but may be freely chosen include:

Key Facts

Director of Studies: Gila Schauer

Programme length: full-time (12 months), part-time (24 months)

Audience: This degree is specifically designed to give you the competence to undertake empirical work in discourse studies which draws on both linguistic and social theory.

Entry requirements:

• Academic: at least upper second class degree (or equivalent) in relevant specialisms
• English language level (for applicants whose native language is not English): minimum IELTS 6.5 (with at least 6.0 in Reading and Writing) / paper-based TOEFL 580 / CBT 237 / or equivalent

Assessment: 6 x 5,000-word essay or equivalent (120 credits) + 12,500-word Dissertation (60 credits)

Enquiries: Marjorie Wood

Employment prospects

The scheme paves the way for employment in a broad range of areas, including teaching in the UK and abroad, research, publishing and the media.