143208 SE 143208 SE Advances in African Linguistic and Literary Studies (2021S)

Advances in African Linguistic and Literary Studies (seminar; 2 hours/week) MA, first or second year, segment "African linguistics" ("seminar on African linguistics")
In this advanced seminar course, participants will be given the opportunity to explore in-depth a particular African linguistic phenomenon that has implications for African literary studies and a particular African literary device, tool, or style that derives from African language structures. Examples that come into mind readily are ideophones, proverbs, and idioms. This semester’s course offering focuses on the concept of phraseology (including idioms and proverbs) that is so pervasive in many African languages and that often appears in many African literary works, especially in African poetry, African drama, and general African oral literary practices, such as folksongs and lullabies.

Method:
Lectures, guest appearances, discussions, debates – seminar presentations by course participants towards writing a term paper of up to 44.000 characters.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES
1. To enable students to survey contemporary interactions between African linguistic and African literary phenomena towards a general theoretical frameworks within the humanities
2. To enable the student to be aware of types of linguistic constructions (such as idioms, proverbs, metaphors, ideophones) that lend themselves to such interactions (this year, phraseology).
3. To train students to synthetize articles produced in top-level linguistics journals towards producing a publishable piece of work themselves.