Collage av bokhyllor i bibliotek och bokstäver.

English

English is arguably the world’s most important language, used by hundreds of millions of people every day. The global reach of English is the result of historic events and developments that continue to characterise contemporary literature, popular culture, and linguistic variation.

The subject of English is characterised by a post-colonial and intercultural profile and primarily comprises studies of literature, linguistics, and cultural studies. Courses on the A-level aim to provide students with both an overview of the literary and linguistic study of English and a perspective of English as a global language connected to many regions and cultures of the world. Courses on the B-level promote a deeper understanding of the colonial history and post-colonial literature of English-speaking people, and of discourses of power as well as linguistic methods for their analysis and for linguistic investigation in general. On the C-level, students become more familiar with discussing and applying theory in preparation for the independent project in English with a literary, linguistic, cultural studies, or didactic orientation. Throughout all levels, students improve their language proficiency and practice academic writing.

Courses in English are included in the following programs: Media, English and Globalisation, International Business Management, and Teacher Education with an Intercultural Profile.

For students who choose to study other subjects at the university, but would like to improve their English language proficiency, the subject offers a series of A-level courses, targeting skills in reading, writing, listening, and speaking in the academic context. These courses include Introduction to English for Higher Education Studies (15 credits) Introduction to Academic Writing (15 credits), and Introduction to Business English (7,5 credits). These courses can serve to complement other university courses or programs of study, especially those that are taught in English.

Our research

Research conducted by the staff reflects the subject’s main two orientations, namely, literature and linguistics, but also includes cultural studies, literature and language didactics, as well as interdisciplinary investigations.

Literature

The subject’s literary research focuses on English-language literature and other English-language texts relevant to multiculturalism and post-colonialism. Race and ethnicity, class, and the representation of minorities and refugees comprise additional areas of focus. Current research projects also include perspectives on gender, capitalism, and human rights.

Linguistics

Linguistic research at the subject of English incorporates the fields of discourse analysis, interactional sociolinguistics, interpersonal pragmatics, corpus linguistics, cognitive linguistics, and psycholinguistics. Multimodality, contrastive linguistics and multilingualism are also represented in current research projects. Much of the subject’s linguistics work focuses on variation in contemporary English as represented in the media and in popular culture. In line with the subject’s post-colonial and multicultural profile, linguistic research also investigates contact between English and other languages, and how this contact is manifested in varieties of English as a second or foreign language.

Subject didactics

The didactic research within the subject of English focuses primarily on language teaching and classroom discourse (including in distance learning contexts) and on academic writing in English as a second or foreign language. Additional didactic research concerns linking language teaching with comics, film and television, and video games, and the field of literary didactics, with a specific focus on teaching critical reading.

Programmes and courses
projects & publications
Staff
Events calendar

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Page updated

10-05-2023