240108 AR Individual Focus Modul (2022W)

As potential partners decide whether they are interested in initiating romantic relationships, first impressions become a crucial part of face-to-face romantic encounters. Verbal and nonverbal immediacy behaviours aid in forming impressions, conveying emotions, and signalling attraction in initial dyadic interactions. However, first-date communication expectations regarding the intimate partners’ immediacy behaviour in the context of flirtation, courtship, and seduction include gender-related and cultural preferences. Therefore, the course seeks to entwine interactional sociolinguistics, sexual scripts theory and digital humanities. As such, the first part of the course is aimed at familiarising you with the range of the fundamental concepts and approaches involved in the study of how language is used in real-life situations (i.e., Interactional Sociolinguistics), specifically, face-to-face romantic encounters. Please, note that the emphasis of the course is on the application of sexual scripts theory to 'real' data.
Within the second part of the course you will be provided the essential grounding in the digital skills that will enable you to analyse immediacy behaviours using cutting-edge research methods. This includes discourse analysis, sociolinguistic analysis, and an overview of the core statistical procedures (e.g., correlation, chi-squared test, Cohen’s effect size, Eta Squared, logistic regression models, etc.) together with the examples of the application of these methods.
Ultimately, the hands-on practical work including data drawn from romantic encounters depicted on American reality dating shows 'The Bachelor' and 'The Bachelorette' will be an important element of the course aimed at overviewing gender-related and cultural preferences for the immediacy behaviour in the contemporary context of flirtation, courtship, and seduction. Specifically, this is the part where you are also invited to contribute to a better understanding of the first impression sexual scripts by finding and sharing 10 first-impression sexual clips (around one minute of initial interaction each) online from any reality dating show (e.g., 'Temptation Island', 'Dating Around', 'First Dates', 'Too Hot to Handle', 'Jubilee Speed-Dating. 10 vs 1: Speed Dating 10 Guys without seeing them', etc.). You will be assigned to perform line-by-line coding of every data chunk to define verbal immediacy cues OR nonverbal immediacy cues within every spoken conversational exchange and analyse them by using newly-acquired digital skills. Given that this is a complex and time-consuming process, please, take this into account before you decide to sign up for the course. You are free to choose any of the reality dating shows representing first impression sexual scripts as the object of analysis for the three written assignments.

This course pursues several goals: to teach you about social and cultural norms, gender stereotypes, and traditional gender roles in intimate relationships in the form of sexual scripts, namely: (1) cultural scripts, (2) interpersonal scripts, and (3) intrapsychic scripts; to develop your skills in digital analysis of the effect of verbal and nonverbal immediacy behaviours on the first impression outcome drawing on a range of digital tools; to feature hands-on research, allowing you to collect data on how potential dates use persuasive markers in the first impression sexual scripts; to equip you with the practical skills necessary for evaluation of expression and interpretation of attraction and interpersonal intimacy in American media dating culture.
You will be expected to undertake the ‘specialist’-task accompanied by a PowerPoint presentation, which is aimed at providing the basis for the group discussion. Every student in the class should participate actively in these group discussions on a weekly basis. It is worth mentioning that all the students will be offered my full support before giving their presentations.