LFU:online

Gaining knowledge about the linguistic processing of health and illness in the context of societal discourses by reading state-of-the-art publications.

Ability to critically handle and reflect different research methods.

Ability to analyze explanations and instructions based on recent linguistic research.

Ability to write a paper.

Health and illness are basic experiences in everyone's life. They are frequently processed in narrative linguistic practices. The linguistic research on narrative structures in general and the analysis of narratives of illness in particular display social and cultural differences in how people deal with this existential phenomenon.

In this course, we cooperate on developing the methodological basis for the linguistic analysis of narratives on health and illness. After that you will conduct your own linguistic research on material you gathered yourself.

Depending on your interests, here are some topics we might discuss:

• micro-linguistic features and practices of narratives of health and illness (e.g. lexicological analysis concerning specific illnesses)
• macro-narratives of health and illness (e.g. "hero's journey")
• Agency (e.g. experiencing lack of power)
• Narrative identity in narratives of health and illness (e.g. empowerment)
• narrative structures and narrating in discourses on health and illness (e.g. COVID-19)
• multimodal forms of telling (e.g. storytelling in journalism)
• Historic, social and cultural aspects of narratives of health and illness (e.g. older and newer conceptualizations of illnesses)
• Text types and communicative genres of narrating health and illness (e.g. doctor's letters, lifestyle apps).

Presentation, preparatory reading and discussions , 1-2 (short) presentation(s)

Oral and written: preparatory reading, active participation in class, (short) presentation(s); written mid term exam, term paper

To be announced in the course

Cf. Curriculum

Please only subscribe for this course if you are willing to discuss serious diseases such as cancer. We will not talk about personal experiences of the participants, yet we will certainly dive into unpleasant themes such as incurable and chronic diseases, pain and death that might be disturbing to some.