31498 - French Language - LM

Learning outcomes

The students have achieved a good active and passive knowledge of French language. In particular, they are able to: attend a lesson in French language, actively participating to it- understand and comment on journalistic and academic texts – understand the specific languages for special purposes of politics and media in the francophone cultures and to critically discuss within an academic context – prepare and orally present a brief research project about one of the subject of the course.

Course contents

Title: Lire l'actualité: une perspective francophone (Reading the Topicality: A Francophone Perspective) The course aims at enhancing ability to read the francophone press and at providing critical tools for analysing the political and journalistic discourse, particularly focussing on the current international issues The discourse analysis will be applied on corpora constituted by texts dealing with contemporary issues

At the end of the course, entirely in French language, the students are able to recognise the main textual types of journalistic discourse (piece of news, comment, editorial), their characteristic linguistic structures as well as the recurring lexical devices in each analysed textual type

Moreover the students will sharpen the critical tools for the textual and discourse analysis of the ideological and cultural implicit discourse

Description of Modulo Dott.ssa Silvia Modena (only for Lingua, società e comnicazione's students):

Entirely in French language, the course aims to analyze, from a discursive point of view, the electoral comparison of the two candidates to the Élysée (Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande) occurred during the last French presidential elections (May 2012).

The course will insist in particular on the Discourse Analysis as a way to deepen the value of language in constructing opposite political position.

Bibliography:

- Patrick Charaudeau & Dominique Maingueneau, (2002), "Dictionnaire d'analyse du discours", Paris, Seuil.

- Dominique Maingueneau, (2007), "Analyser les textes de communication", Paris, Colin.

Readings/Bibliography

Print and online newspapers

Teaching methods

Methodology: 1) historical and political contextualization of the national and international press; 2) presentation and organization of the newspapers; 3) presentation of the main textual types of journalistic discourse; 4) structural discourse analysis of each textual type with particular focus on the distinctive vocabulary for special purposes used according to a specific theme.

Assessment methods

The final exam consists on a written test; the students are asked to recognise the main features of the francophone journalistic discourse

The final exam also consists on a linguistic examination. The students achieve the propaedeutic ability through precise linguistic exercises with the tutor.

Teaching tools

The discourse analysis will help examining the linguistic structures of the media discourse

Office hours

See the website of Paola Puccini