Communication Cultures - Period 4

This course introduces the topic of intercultural communication as a field of study we can examine with the help of a discourse approach. Adopting such an approach means that we will not only consider discourse as the language people speak in different countries. A discourse approach makes it possible to also address 'culture' and 'interculturality' in student cultures, gender cultures, generational cutlures, the cultures of Internet groups and cultures that exist around products of popular culture on Facebook (e.g., fan cultures).

During the course we will introduce and learn to use disourse analytic approaches to explore a range of different cultures and explore what the benefits are of considering the communication between people of such different groups as 'moments of intercultural communicatoin'. What does it offer a communication specialist to consider the discourse of different groups in society in this way? We will also attempt to answer this question, together with guest lectures from invited speakers.

The examples we work with during the course may vary and students will be asked to collect data for their own small-scale research project. Lectures, guest lectures and seminars will be geared towards presenting data and observations when adopting different discourse analytic approaches. Group presentations, assignments and discussions will always link to theoretical debates in the course literature, actual (professional) practice and to the real life learning environment of the international classroom.

Contact hours listed under a course description may vary due to the combination of lecture-based and independent work required for each course therefore, CEA's recommended credits are based on the ECTS credits assigned by VU Amsterdam. 1 ECTS equals 28 contact hours assigned by VU Amsterdam.