Great Britain and the United States” is aimed at the student with fluent English but limited knowledge about the Anglophone countries, and aims to provide a condensed introduction to both the UK and the USA, similar to what would be conveyed in the two countries’ respective Social Studies courses. The course therefore provides a basic but comprehensive introduction to the United Kingdom and the United States, ranging from the Constitutions of each, the UK monarchy and the structure of their respective systems of government to the demographic and religious make-up of each of the respective governments. 

Course content:

Definition of language and scope of linguistics. Neighbouring disciplines.
Morphology: derivation and inflection.
Syntax: structuralism, generativism, cognitivism.
Semantics: structuralism, Natural Semantic Metalanguage, cognitivism.
Pragmatics: context, speech acts, face, politeness.
Psycholinguistics: language acquisition, language pathology, bilingualism.
Sociolinguistics: geographical and social varieties.
Language evolution and language history.
Writing systems.
Human language and animal communication.
Language and culture: Language relativism, language universals.