Course description:

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• Advanced seminar designed for professors and graduate students with specialized knowledge in (Critical) Discourse Studies.

• Admissions will be limited to 20 scholars from around the world.

• Participants will have opportunity to share and get feedback on their own work. 

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Over this eleven-week seminar, participants will receive training in Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis with a focus on how it is to be applied in research papers. Participants will also have the opportunity to share and get feedback on their own work.

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Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis has become widely used within discourse studies, but also across many disciplines beyond, for example, in health communications, organizational studies and political communication. One reason for this, is its adaptability and the underlying simplicity in its basic operational logic. It is a research method comprised of a flexible set of tools that can be applied to a huge range of domains of data: to texts, images, videos, policy documents, infographics, product packaging, and even interior design.  In all cases, it allows the analyst to draw out the meanings carried in instances of communication which may be less obvious to the casual observer.  

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The seminar will cover analyzing different forms of data: newspapers, textbooks, websites, policy documents, video, infographics and product packaging.  The aim is to create fluency in how to understand and choose from the available tool-kit in each case, in a way that is relevant for engaging with the concerns of wider research fields. In other words, how do we use Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis to form relevant scholarly journal articles?  While classes over the course comprise learning and practicing the application of different tools of analysis, we also consider how these are to be applied in research contexts, studying examples of published papers, and breaking down how they work. 

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​During the course we look at:

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Analyzing forms of data:

• texts

• Images

• Video

• Visual design and discourse

• Infographics

• Packaging and objects

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How to present our research:

• Presenting MCDA as a contribution to a research field

• How to create an effective literature review

• Structuring a research paper

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Program:

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2 hours weekly meetings over 11 weeks. The sessions are comprised of combinations of lectures, workshop activities, discussion, and presentations.

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Class 1. The notion of Multimodal Discourse: in image and text

 

Class 2.  how people are represented in communication

 

Class 3.  Drawing out actions, processes and causalities

 

Class 4.  Multimodal design 1: typeface

 

Class 5:  Multimodal design 2: color

 

Class 6: Document design and language: bullet points, tables and composition

 

Class 7: Infographics

 

Class 8: handling and presenting social media data

 

Class 9: engaging with research fields and designing a literature review

 

Class 10: presentation and discussion of ongoing work

 

Class 11: presentation and discussion of ongoing work