After a map and naming of the parts of language via systemic functional (i.e., Hallidayan) linguistics (discourse, genre, phrase and sentence, transitivity, modality, the whole shebang), we will narrow the focus to Cognitive Linguistics and Corpus Linguistics, which offer new concepts and methods (of very different kinds) for describing meaning.

We will use the excellent text by Croft and Cruse to examine Cognitive Linguistic treatments of categorization, lexical semantics, metaphor, construction grammar, and language change. We will then pursue issues of corpus and collocation further with Adolphs' book and some readings and look a variety of applications to literary criticism, critical discourse analysis, and ESL. There will be some practice using electronic corpora (including the British National Corpus) and analytic tools (including Wordsmith Tools), and come to grips with the very hot issue of the Web as corpus. Topics for the seminar paper may range from an application of these tools to address particular texts or issues to critical examinations of the theories and ideas presented.

Texts:

• Eggins, Suzanne. An Introduction to Systemic Functional Linguistics 2nd Ed. Continuum International Publishing Group, 2005. [ 9780826457868]
• Croft, William and Cruse, Alan D. Cognitive Linguistics. Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics, 2004. [0-521-66770-4]
• Adolphs, Svenja. Introducing Electronic Text Analysis: A Practical Guide for Language and Literary Studies. Routledge, 2006. [0-415-32021-6]