ENGP8 Introduction to the Main Varieties of English and ENGP9 Professional Cultural Competencies required as prerequisites.

Corpus linguistics is one of the main methodologies in present day linguistic research. By using corpora, or large collections of computer-readable texts, we can analyse vast amounts of data quickly and efficiently, and reach well-informed and empirically based judgments about the linguistic features that interest us. This methodology course will provide you with the tools you’ll need to use corpus linguistic methods in your MA thesis and in your other linguistic work. Although the course requires no prior knowledge of corpus linguistics, we will proceed at a relatively quick pace so basic IT skills will be necessary. Topics to be discussed include the theory and history of corpus linguistics, the principles of corpus compiling, surveys of available corpora, principles and practices of corpus annotation, various methods of retrieval and data management, and basic statistical methods.
Course work will be practically oriented and task-based, with some background reading, plenty of group work, oral presentations and a final research paper.

The course aims at exposing some of the many roles that the city, as a specific source of human experience, has played in literature from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century. To some extent, the course also explores literature’s influence on how individual cities are seen and understood. Our analysis will make use of a number of viewpoints, some of them solidly rooted in socio-historical conditions and others more clearly based on metaphorical (or metonymical) approaches to the city. In addition to examining several stories set in well-known cities, we will take a look at urban studies as a field and find ways of using its perspectives in readings of literary texts.
During the last few weeks of the course, students will give presentations on a literary or cinematic text not included in course materials.
Assessment: class participation, a group presentation, and a course diary.
Note: If you have taken the Literary Landscapes course in or before 2013, there will be some overlap, as previously that course also touched upon city literature.

In addition to enrolment in NettiOpsu you need to fill in a form to indicate an order of preference for your chosen options courses.

The last twenty years have witnessed more developments in communication technology than any other period in human history. Instant messaging, social networking and hypertextual linking of texts are just some of the many facets of computer-mediated communication or CMC. For the linguist, these new means of communication raise many questions. For example, how have CMC technologies affected the production and reception of text? Does effortless multimodality affect our need to describe and report our experiences in words? Is email simply a new form of letter writing? Do supranational online communities change the way we look at language contact? What new features of language use have emerged in CMC contexts and are any of them catching on outside CMC? In this course we will look at these question and others from the linguists’ perspective, focusing on exploring the impact of CMC on English and of English on CMC.

Course work will involve background reading, practical exercises, group work and a final essay.

In addition to enrolment in NettiOpsu you need to fill in a form to indicate an order of preference for your chosen options courses.

The course explores selected clausal argument structure constructions in English, and the idea that they carry particular meanings as constructions. Constructions are viewed as “form-meaning correspondences that exist independently of particular verbs” and in this framework “constructions themselves carry meaning” (Adele Goldberg, 1995, Constructions, p. 1). The course begins with an introduction to basic assumptions and principles in the study of sentential complementation, including the postulation of understood subjects. It then turns to the discussion of selected constructions in English involving sentential complements, with a focus on the matrix verbs selecting them and on the syntactic and semantic properties of the constructions. These include patterns with to infinitives and -ing complements, especially the types of I remembered to mail the letter and I remembered mailing the letter. Authentic data from electronic corpora, including the BNC and the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) are made use of in the course. The course is also meant to help participants with thesis projects in the area of the course.
The course is largely a lecture course, with a small number of homework assignments and readings. Course work includes regular attendance, class participation, a brief essay presented in class on an approved topic in the area of the course in the second half of the term, and a final exam.

In addition to enrolment in NettiOpsu you need to fill in a form to indicate an order of preference for your chosen options courses.

 Learning to read literary theoretical texts is an invaluable skill for any student who will be writing their thesis on literature. On this course, we will study some of the most famous classics of modern literary theory from T. S. Eliot onwards, ponder over the problem of why literary theory is necessary in the first place, and find out how to apply in practice this newly learned knowhow in the reading of literary texts. The course is warmly recommended for students in intermediate studies.
 
 Methods of study include some lecturing, but mostly we will proceed in the form of a reading circle and team/pair work. An active role is therefore encouraged. Assessment will be based on class participation and a process writing assignment.

In addition to enrolment in NettiOpsu you need to fill in a form to indicate an order of preference for your chosen options courses.

This course focuses on gender and writing, specifically on women’s writing. We will mainly examine North American writers (novels and short stories), from the end of the 19th century to the present – for example, such writers as Kate Chopin, Pauline Hopkins, Alice Walker and Katherine V. Forrest. Thus, the texts will range from 19th-century ”New Woman” fiction to African American stories about passing to contemporary lesbian detective fiction. Through these texts we will discuss, among other things, the origin of feminist literary criticism, differences between women, sexual politics, women’s roles, power relations, essentialism and desire.

Assessment: essay/course diary and class contribution.

In addition to enrolment in NettiOpsu you need to fill in a form to indicate an order of preference for your chosen options courses.

Spoken language differs from written language both in form and function. For example, grammatical units such as sentences, clauses and phrases are the basic features of written texts but in spoken language their boundaries are often difficult to define. The aim of this course is to consider the peculiarities of spoken English and introduce different approaches to analysing spoken language. We will take a look at the grammar and lexis of spoken English, speech genres, spoken language corpora and various methods of discourse analysis.
 
Course work includes regular attendance and class participation, background reading, oral presentation and a final essay.

(This course is offered again in Spring 2014.)

In addition to enrolment in NettiOpsu you need to fill in a form to indicate an order of preference for your chosen options courses.

The course will consist of fortnightly lectures (for all participants) with associated tutorials (2 groups) in the week following the lecture week.
 
 The aim is to learn to read theoretical texts, some of which are highly complex, and discover their line of argumentation. An important part of the effort is to become aware of the historical dialogue in which the theories are engaged, and to understand how one might take part in it.
 
 The course will touch on the fields of New Criticism, structuralism, Marxism, psychoanalysis, feminism, poststructuralism, deconstruction, the New Historicism, cultural materialism, postcolonial and queer theory, as well as recent developments in ecocriticism and cognitive poetics.
 
 Each student is expected to purchase Hans Bertens: Literary Theory: The Basics (2nd ed., 2008; available at the university bookstore), which will provide preliminary reading for each lecture.
 
 In the tutorials, students will work in teams to apply the methods learned to literary texts and see how readings change according to theoretical position, broadening one's view of the text. Assessment will be based on class participation and a process learning diary.

This course traces features of change and continuity in the core grammar of English from the eighteenth century to the present, with data drawn primarily from synchronic and diachronic computer corpora of English. The course focuses on complementation, but there are no formal prerequisites for attending. The option will offer suggestions on how to use computer corpora to write a pro gradu thesis on complementation.
Course-work includes class participation, homework assignments, a brief paper to be presented in class on complementation or another approved aspect of English grammar, and a final exam.

In addition to enrolment in NettiOpsu you need to fill in a form to indicate an order of preference for your chosen options courses.

This course reviews linguistic as well as various socio-cultural aspects of English as a global language, paying attention to both theory and practice. The course has three main aims. Firstly, it briefly outlines the development and characteristics of English as a global language – the variation, change and diversification of English in different regions, societies, communities and settings in the world – with specific emphasis on non-native-speaker contexts. Of particular interest here is the role and use of English in Finland. Secondly, the course provides a critical overview of issues around and debates on the impact of the spread of English in the world. Thirdly, it familiarizes students with a range of linguistic and discourse-pragmatic approaches to studying English as a global language, also providing suggestions and support for pro gradu research in this area. Course work includes weekly sessions, background reading, and a mini project, its oral presentation and written report.

In addition to enrolment in NettiOpsu you need to fill in a form to indicate an order of preference for your chosen options courses.

This course focuses on variation, a crucially important aspect of linguistics. How and why is language different in different contexts? What causes variation, how do we study it, what challenges does it pose and how should we deal with it as language professionals? Following an introduction to the main concepts, we will look at a number of registers in detail. With case studies ranging from academic articles and short stories to political speeches and online newspapers, we will get to know specific contexts of text production and examine the variation they give rise to in language. The course will make moderate use of corpus linguistic methods, but no prior knowledge of corpora is required. Course work includes regular attendance and participation, homework assignments, a presentation in class and a final paper on a related topic.

In addition to enrolment in NettiOpsu you need to fill in a form to indicate an order of preference for your chosen options courses.

This course concentrates on the significance of settings in fiction, and on how descriptions of landscape influence the thematic structure of texts. We will be considering the aesthetics of different kinds of landscapes, analyzing their social and psychological effects through their literary depictions. We will also be touching on various theoretical approaches, including ecocriticism, and using some concepts from spatial theory and cultural geography to make sense of the texts. Thematically, the emphasis will often – though not exclusively – fall on the relationship between humanity and nature. The texts will cover a wide range of historical circumstances and geographical locations. The course aims at suggesting, among other things, that descriptions of setting can be just as important in literature as the events narrated.
Assessment: class participation, a short presentation, and a course diary.

In addition to enrolment in NettiOpsu you need to fill in a form to indicate an order of preference for your chosen options courses.

In this course we will examine the question of murder and representation, with a special focus on gender issues. We will concentrate on one type of murder, serial murder, as a cultural narrative from the end of the 19th century to the present. During this course we will analyze the cultural imagery and social contexts of serial killing in Britain and the United States. In particular, we will try to answer this question: how are gender and "normalcy" constructed through murder narratives, deviation, and crime? We will start with the case of Jack the Ripper - the first "modern" serial killer - and his victims and move on to representations of male and female psychopaths and lesbian serial killing. We will explore such different genres as films and documentary programmes as well as texts written by FBI agents, serial killers and psychiatrists. We will also read three novels: Robert Bloch's Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho, and Helen Zahavi's Dirty Weekend.

Assessment: essay and class contribution.

In addition to enrolment in NettiOpsu you need to fill in a form to indicate an order of preference for your chosen options courses.

This course will focus on the social aspects of language variation. The first half of the course will be devoted to a detailed discussion of some of the central issues in so-called Labovian sociolinguistics/microsociolinguistics. During the second half of the course the focus will be on a number of sociolinguistic topics including language and ethnicity, language, sex, and gender, language contact and language change.
A reading list will be provided at the beginning of the course.
Course work includes weekly sessions, background reading, oral presentation in the class, and a final essay.

In addition to enrolment in NettiOpsu you need to fill in a form to indicate an order of preference for your chosen options courses.

Since Freud's ventures into literary aesthetics in the early 1900s, psychoanalysis and psychoanalytical criticism has provided plenty of food for thought in the study of literature. Over the years, theorists such as Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristeva, Harold Bloom and Slavoj Zizek have applied different approaches to shed light on the unpredictable workings of the human psyche. On this course, we will study important texts written in this tradition to gauge their contemporary relevance.
Methods of study include some lecturing, but mostly we will proceed in the form of a reading circle and team/pair work. An active role is therefore encouraged. Assessment will be based on class participation and a process writing assignment.

In addition to enrolment in NettiOpsu you need to fill in a form to indicate an order of preference for your chosen options courses.

Spoken language differs from written language both in form and function. For example, grammatical units such as sentences, clauses and phrases are the basic features of written texts but in spoken language their boundaries are often difficult to define. The aim of this course is to consider the peculiarities of spoken English and introduce different approaches to analysing spoken language. We will take a look at the grammar and lexis of spoken English, speech genres, spoken language corpora and various methods of discourse analysis.
 
Course work includes regular attendance and class participation, background reading, oral presentation and a final essay.

(This course is also offered in Autumn 2013,)

In addition to enrolment in NettiOpsu you need to fill in a form to indicate an order of preference for your chosen options courses.