LFU:online

Ability to understand academic literature about practices of explaining and to reflect relevant issues critically; competence to read topic-related scientific texts and analyse texts and utterances according to the methods of different linguistic disciplines; ability to write a term paper that meets academic standards

Explaining is a very basic linguistic practice that is applied in various text and conversational types as well as in different domains and discourses. Its main function is to establish or expand knowledge (cf. Morek 2012: 28). In this course, we deal with this practice at the level of larger linguistic units. First, we discuss theoretical concepts, typical linguistic realisations and exemplary old and new linguistic studies of explaining. Then, the students present the projects they developed themselves for their term paper.

Some theoretical background and suggestions for topics:

• Explaining as a speech act - similarities and disparities in comparison with explicating, describing and instructing
• Knowledge, knowledge transfer, language and knowledge
• Communication between experts and laypersons: special languages, transfer language, intermediation
• Comprehensibility, text optimization, understanding
• Explaining in contexts of teaching
• Explaining with metaphor
• Explaining in everyday text types
• Explaining in media
• Justifying oneself by explaining
• Mansplaining
• Intercultural explaining
• Explaining in plain language

Presentations, reading tasks and discussions, exercises

Presentation, written exam during the term, term paper

Morek, Miriam (2012): Kinder erklären. Interaktionen in Familie und Unterricht im Vergleich. Tübingen: Stauffenburg (Stauffenburg Linguistik 60).