COMM 3210

Students will examine the interaction of language and culture in everyday life. They will explore how language gives order not only to communication but to perceptions of the world and how it operates. Students will analyze how historical power relations have shaped language and, subsequently, policy and law. Students will learn discourse analysis techniques to assess and analyze a diverse range of influential “texts” encountered in everyday life. They will examine how structures of power and oppression are embedded within institutions that employ, manufacture, and broadcast texts, and how dialogic communication and discourse analysis can enable the deconstruction of the underlying forces that shape these texts.