What is a Text? Texts, Power and Perspectives

About the lecture

In this module, we think about the relationship between language and power in society, in particular the role of language in creating and maintaining unequal power structures. As we move through the module, we consider: (i) the concept of a text; (ii) the concept of multimodality, and the different modes that might feature in a text; (iii) the concept of intertextuality; (iv) the power of texts; (v) the extent to which texts are both "socially shaped" but also "socially shaping"; (vi) the question of whose texts are most powerful, and the extent to which the answer to that question has been shifted by the advent of social media; (vii) the meaning of the word 'critical' in critical discourse studies

About the lecturer

Prof. Christopher Hart is Professor of Linguistics at Lancaster University. His research draws on insights and methods from cognitive science and critical discourse analysis to investigate the links between language, cognition and social/political action. Some of his recent publications include Discourse, Grammar and Ideology: Functional and Cognitive Perspectives (2014), (as co-editor with D. Kelsey) Discourses of Disorder: Riots, Strikes and Protests in the Media (2018), and (as editor) Cognitive Linguistic Approaches to Text and Discourse: From Poetics to Politics (2019).