Many empirical inquiries rely on data cast in language. As the sole reason for such data is their meanings, the course reviews various theories of meaning in view of analyzing texts and talk in the context of how people use, interpret, and accomplish things with them. The course moves from notions of code, reference, sense and vocabulary usage, through how metaphors frame cognition, how narratives establish identities, how speech acts create facts, conventions, and institutions, to the politics of meaning making and maintenance. Content Analysis . It demonstrates these with studies of mass media content, interview or panel data, and systematic efforts to provide legal evidence or draw valid inferences from personal documents.
Students learn to design a content analysis and do the preliminary work on it.
They may also perform a content analysis on already available data, develop a new analytical technique from available theories and test it, or they may explore relevant literature to solve a methodological problem in content analysis. Seminar in Message Analysis . Advanced topics in the analysis of verbal and non-verbal message content will be considered and methodological or practical problems arising out of research projects will be solved in a seminar format. Language in the Social Construction of Realities . Departing from traditional notions of language as a medium, this course sheds light on the discursive practices that constitute the realities we come to live in and observe.