Graduate Course - Beijing Foreign Studies University

 

group foto

 

Course Description
Some of the most interesting work in the study of language and culture can be found in the fields of cognitive anthropology and in the sociology of culture. Cognitive anthropology and cognitive linguistics are new disciplines that have to do with how human beings conceptualize and express themselves through language and other symbolic systems. This course investigates three approaches to culture: culture as a symbolic system, culture as social activity (practical knowledge) and culture as personal constructs. The first two approaches are integrated into a new model known as the language and social construction of culture. The topics included in this seminar are: spatial models expressed through language and visual metaphor, counting systems and how they are articulated, the role of analogical reasoning, the uses of metaphor and metonymy and other major tropes as cultural tools, the difference between ritual and drama, the concept of world views and how they are constructed, grammaticality as an instrument of language, social and cultural scripts and the role that they play in practical knowledge, discourse structures as organized social interactions, and the political sociology of world societies, world cultures.

Textbooks

CULTURE THEORY: ESSAYS ON MIND, SELF, AND EMOTIONS.
Richard A. Shweder and Robert A. LeVine. 1084. Cambridge University Press.
ISBN: 0-521-31831-9 Paperback.

textbook picture

COMMUNICATION AND CULTURE
Tony Schirato and Susan Yell
textbook photo

 

SYLLABUS
Session One: Introduction to the course, course requirements, course procedures. and final papers
 
Lecture Series: Theoretical Approaches to Culture. Lecture and discussion
Session Two: The Social Construction of Culture, lecture and discusssion
Session Three: Symbolic Models of Culture, lecture and discussion
Session Four: Culture as Communication, lecture and discussion
Session Five: Cultural Materialism, lecture and discussion
Session Six: Culture as Praxis, lecture and discussion
Session Seven: Business Culture and Postmodern Culture, lecture and discussion
Session Eight: Framing Culture, lecture and discussion
Seminar Series - Part I
TEXT: Globalization and Culture
Session Nine: Globalization and Human Integration
Session Ten: Globalization and Culture - Three Paradigms
Session Eleven: Globalization and Hybridization
Sessuib Twelve Continuation on Hybridity and Reactions to the Concept
Session Thirteen: Clobal Mélange
Seminar Series - Part II
TEXT: Culture Theory
Session Fourteen: Part I - Culture Theory an Introduction
Session Fifteeen: Part II - Culture, Self and Emotion
Session Sixteen: Part III - Culture, language and thought
Session Seventeen: Part IV - Commentary and Preface to the book
 
FINAL RESEARCH PAPER