MA Global Intercultural Communication

How do we successfully communicate with people when we come from different cultures or do not share a language? How can our linguistic choices create different effects on different audiences? And what effects do new digital media that characterise global networks have on intercultural relationships?

On this MA, you will address such issues critically, studying different aspects of language and intercultural communication from a range of perspectives. You will come to view language both as a cultural resource and as a cultural practice, and understand the impact that language and communication has on our intercultural, interpersonal relationships. In a world where most professions routinely operate across linguistic and cultural barriers, our MA in Global Intercultural Communication will provide you with the key knowledge and skills that will enable you to take on a wide range of key roles in a host of professions where an understanding of intercultural communication is critical.

About

Intercultural communication is crucial to comprehending the world of today and participating in the world of tomorrow. Globalisation has led to greater centrality of knowledge and information. Different linguistic communities have ever-increasing contact – through migration, tourism, education, and information and media flows – yet linguistic and cultural barriers persist.

As language and intercultural exchanges become more frequent and diverse, and the media that carry these exchanges proliferate, keen intercultural communication skills are now more crucial than ever.

In this course, you will explore how the linguistic forms and patterns within a language give expression to a culture’s worldview, sociocultural norms and values. You’ll approach linguistic communication as a cultural practice, used to both create and sustain our sense of personal, cultural and national identities. You’ll use a variety of different analytic approaches, ranging from discourse analysis and anthropological linguistics to semiotics and cross-cultural pragmatics. You will also study digital technologies which increasingly mediate international human communication, and constitute one of the key infrastructures that enable and inflect global cultural interchange. Our students come from across the globe and this makes our seminars particularly engaging – you’ll take part in fascinating cross-cultural exchanges both with your peers and your tutors.

To succeed on this course, you do not need to have any pre-existing theoretical knowledge as our students come from a range of linguistic, academic and vocational backgrounds. For example, you might already have studied or worked in sectors such as business, development studies, education, hospitality and tourism, law, management, marketing, psychology, or medicine, and you want to develop the intercultural communication skills that will help you in your future working life. You might have previously studied for an undergraduate degree in English, history, geography, media, or politics, and you now want to combine your previous studies to develop an interdisciplinary view of language, culture and communication. Or you might speak several languages or you might have lived abroad, and you now want to explore the academic underpinnings of your experiences.

Whatever your motivation, completing this course will equip you with the theoretical and empirical understanding necessary to understand global cultural communications today, bringing significant added value to succeed in your chosen profession.

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Important Information

Whilst the University will make every effort to offer the courses listed, changes may sometimes be made arising from the regular review of course programmes. Where this activity leads to significant (but not minor) changes to programmes, there will normally be prior consultation of students and others. Changes may for example consist of variations to the content and method of delivery of programmes, courses and other services, to discontinue programmes, courses and other services and to merge or combine programmes or courses. The University will endeavour to keep such changes to a minimum, and will inform students.

Assessment for Year 1

You are assessed on the basis of coursework, which mainly involves case studies, oral and written presentations, commentaries, essays and an 8,000-word dissertation.

You will receive regular feedback on your practice assignments from your tutors, as a platform for improving your work before your formal or ‘summative’ assessment, and we encourage you to discuss this feedback with your tutors.

Structure

This is a one-year full-time course, and there is an option to take it part-time over two years. You will take a combination of compulsory and optional modules, giving you a solid foundation in the discipline, with room to specialise in areas that particularly interest you.

In your first semester you will build a strong base of disciplinary knowledge with a set of three complementary compulsory modules:

Language, Culture and Thought
The Power of Discourse: Representation and Interaction
Understanding Digital Media

In your second semester, you will specialise by selecting three modules from a range of options, which will help you build your skills and experience. Topics typically include: intercultural communication in practice; conflict and conflict resolution in intercultural communication; language issues in a global multilingual context; and intercultural education and training.

You will also take a year-long academic and research skills module, and your studies will culminate with a dissertation on a subject of your choice. You will choose a topic based on your own interests or career plans in consultation with your dissertation supervisor. You will begin work on this at the end of the spring semester, to be submitted in September.

Teaching and Learning

The department of Language and Communication Studies at UEA is small enough that you will receive personal staff-student contact and individual academic support, whilst also benefiting from the buzz of the larger, interdisciplinary School of Politics, Philosophy, Language and Communication Studies. We are at the cutting edge of research, ensuring that when you graduate you are well informed and highly employable.

You will learn from experts in intercultural communication, cross-cultural communication, cross-cultural pragmatics, (critical) discourse analysis, and cross-cultural cognitive linguistics. We also have specialist knowledge in translation, including translation quality and ethics, technological tools for translators, audiovisual translation, and forensic translation.

The year long Academic and Research Skills programme will help you make the most of your studies and prepare you for your subsequent career. This programme also provides a great foundation for further postgraduate studies at PhD level.

Independent study
As well as seminar work, you will benefit from numerous events and talks to support you in your learning as you work towards your career goals. These include a series of regular talks from visiting professionals and academics, addressing translation, intercultural communication, and language and culture-related topics of global, cultural and social significance. You can also attend a wealth of talks, screenings and exhibitions across the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, and we are affiliated to the prestigious British Centre for Literary Translation.

You will have access to the James Platt Centre, our state-of-the-art language laboratory and multimedia self-access resources room, with computer-assisted translation software (SDL Trados and MultiTerm 2014, MemoQ, WINcaps). These materials complement the excellent holdings of the UEA library.

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Assessment for Year 1

You are assessed on the basis of coursework, which mainly involves case studies, oral and written presentations, commentaries, essays and an 8,000-word dissertation.

Compulsory Modules

LANGUAGE, CULTURE AND THOUGHT

Code PPLC7010A

Credits 20

Do you want to understand the relations between language, culture and thought? This module will give you an insight into some aspects of Linguistic Anthropology, Psycholinguistics, and Applied Linguistics. You will look at language and linguistic issues from different perspectives in relation with culture and mind. You will be able to understand aspects of cross-cultural variation in verbal and non-verbal communication, acculturation and culture shock, multilingualism and second language acquisition, and differences in the encoding of meaning. You will take part in classroom-based activities in pairs and small groups. You will be assessed at the end of term with an essay. This module will provide you with intercultural awareness and a deeper understanding of the differences among languages and cultures.

THE POWER OF DISCOURSE: REPRESENTATION AND INTERACTION

Code PPLL7001A

Credits 20

Why may some politicians or journalists prefer to say: the UK immigration number needs to be controlled rather than we need to control the number of immigrants coming to the UK? and why am I addressing you as you or we in the rest of this module description? In this module, you'll explore some of these questions and discover the ways in which language in use (discourse) shapes and is shaped by socio-cultural practices, values and perspectives, reflecting different communicative conventions and purposes. We will consider, for example, the powerful expressive patterns used in media, advertising, political speeches, news reporting, institutional contexts and how they may work to persuade, entertain or (mis-)inform us. The module will also help you discover how particular uses of language have the power to shape the way we relate to each other and continually construct our social roles. Essentially, this module is for those who are curious about the practical impact of expressive choices in everyday written and oral communication and wish to find out more about linguistic flexibility, creativity and transferability, including translation and localisation. On completion of this module, you'll have learnt how to identify significant expressive patterns in any form of communication and use this understanding to challenge and/or shape communicative practice in your future studies or employment. You'll be taught in a seminar format, providing plenty of opportunity for hands-on practice and discussion and you will be assessed on the analysis of material of your own choice.

UNDERSTANDING DIGITAL MEDIA

Code PPLM7000A

Credits 20

Digital technologies are often hyped as revolutionising society. You will be introduced to the ways in which the internet and other digital technologies are (and are not) affecting society from theoretical and empirical perspectives. The module is divided into three blocks: the first introduces the theoretical debates surrounding digital media; the second discusses how our everyday interpersonal relations are affected by digital media; the third addresses the impact of digital technology on media and politics. Topics covered include: the network society; social networking and virtual communities, surveillance, digital journalism and online activism.

ACADEMIC AND RESEARCH SKILLS - Year Long

Code PPLC7015Y

Credits 20

The year-long module PPLC7015Y is designed to familiarise postgraduate students with research resources and basic aspects of research methodology (e.g. access to, and use of, sources and resources, collection, analysis and presentation of materials and data). It is taught over two semesters: the first in the Autumn focuses on seminar-related activities, the second in the Spring on dissertation-related work. It is assessed by an oral exam on a pass/ fail basis after the end of the second semester. The module is obligatory for all LCS full-time postgraduate students on taught MA programmes and open only to them.

MA DISSERTATION LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION STUDIES (MAGIC 40 CREDITS)

Code PPLC7019X

Credits 40

If you’re taking a Language and Communication MA, you’ll be required to complete a Dissertation, undertaken under supervision of a member of the School’s academic team. Work on the dissertation begins after the end of the spring semester, if you’re studying full-time. If you’re studying part-time, you’ll begin your dissertation at the start of the Spring semester. The choice of topic and format is made by you in consultation with academic staff, usually before the end of the Spring semester. Your supervisor is allocated by the beginning of the period of supervision immediately after the end of the Spring semester and will provide you with general advice about approach, background literature, content, structure and presentation of the dissertation. Submission is normally at the end of August/beginning of September.

Optional A Modules

(60 credits)

CORPORA IN LANGUAGE RESEARCH, LEARNING AND TEACHING

Code EDUE7045B

Credits 20

Computer-assisted investigations of collections of texts representative of a language (e.g. English) or one of its uses (e.g. academic English) have become increasingly popular since the 1980s. Explorations of these textual collections, which are known as ‘corpora’ (the plural of ‘corpus’), have revolutionized our knowledge of language (e.g. is ‘small’ or ‘little’ used with ‘hill’?) and about language (e.g. do we use more subordinate clauses in spoken or written English). Such explorations have also impacted on the ways we learn and teach languages – for instance, they can help learners to develop their autonomous language learning skills. This module is aimed at introducing you to the fascinating area of investigating language through computer tools for research, learning and/or teaching purposes. The module will primarily focus on English language corpora, but you will be encouraged to transfer the skills acquired in the module to the analysis of corpora in other languages if that is relevant to your current/future profession if, for example, you are or aim to be a translator. The final assignment is flexible, allowing you to choose a topic for further investigation which is most relevant to your own needs and wants.

LANGUAGE ISSUES IN A GLOBAL MULTILINGUAL CONTEXT

Code PPLC7001B

Credits 20

Every day millions of people across the globe consume information on the internet or on television, mediated from languages that they do not know. How does this happen? What is at stake? Linguistically, socio-culturally? These are the kinds of question that we address with Language Issues in a Global Multilingual Context. We focus on language-related issues associated with the globalisation of communication and the media. You will consider a range of materials - texts and their translation(s), multilingual sources of information (e.g. global news, consumer information), products of audiovisual translation (e.g. subtitling, dubbing), IT mediated or processed texts - to explore issues involved in the transposition and dissemination of (spoken and written) text into other media and other languages across different spheres of activity (e.g. media, politics, culture). The subject matter relates to different domains of enquiry (including mediation/translation studies, linguistics, communication studies, cultural studies, for example) and the aim is to sensitize you to language-related issues in a global context from a range of theoretical and methodological perspectives. Within the interdisciplinary context of the module, you will develop to a high level your awareness and understanding of language and communication issues in a global world, and become familiar with different critical approaches to these issues. You will gain the ability to evaluate these approaches critically and evaluate their relevance and usefulness to your own needs and circumstances. You will acquire skills of independent research, with a focus on appropriate methodology, data collection, analysis, synthesis and evaluation, and refine your oral and written presentation skills of your findings. Sound receptive knowledge of at least one language other than the mother tongue required.

INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION IN PRACTICE

Code PPLC7007B

Credits 20

Do you wish to pursue a career in international management and relations, multilingual business, or international development? Are you interested in becoming a more effective communicator in other professions such as translation, interpreting, education, and cultural mediation? In this module we will explore the issues fundamental to intercultural communication (IC) in practical contexts. You will examine the different ways of thinking about effective communication in a variety of work/organisation-based environments. During the seminars/lecture series, invited practitioners will introduce you to how IC operates in specific organisations, including government agencies or in multilingual business management. On completion of this module, you will have developed the linguistic skills, cultural competence, and critical thinking required for the production of an extended research project in intercultural communication. You will also have acquired a sense of how cultural assumptions may influence communication with others from different backgrounds, and developed a greater willingness to enter into dialogue with the values prevalent in cultures other than your own.

CONFLICT AND CONFLICT RESOLUTION IN INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION

Code PPLC7008B

Credits 20

Can “cultural” differences cause conflict in communication? How are they to be resolved without prioritizing one culture over the other? In this module we study conflict and conflict resolution strategies across different cultural contexts. You will study a wide range of communication domains, e.g. everyday encounters, language at work, language in diplomatic contexts, language and social cohesion, language and racism, language and gender, and language in the globalization process, also with reference to your specific linguistic/cultural backgrounds. Our approach is interdisciplinary; it includes Face and Politeness Theories, Discourse Analysis and Intercultural Communication Studies. The module will help you understand better the conditions for cross-cultural misunderstanding and conflict and strategies of conflict escalation and resolution.

INTERCULTURAL EDUCATION AND TRAINING

Code PPLC7014B

Credits 20

It is often claimed that intercultural communication is essential in today’s globalised world, but how can it be taught, learned and assessed? This question is essential for practitioners in a wide range of educational contexts and it is the central theme you will explore. You don’t need to have a teaching qualification to take this module. Whether you are a current or an aspiring teacher, trainer, mentor or coach, you will examine the pedagogical tools of intercultural learning that can be applied in your subject specialism. You will have the chance to gain a firm grounding in key notions from theoretical and empirical perspectives, delving deeply into critical pedagogy and uncovering core concepts, such as curriculum internationalisation, global citizenship and intercultural education. You will benefit from the flexibility of this module and gain experience in adapting new knowledge to suit your individual interests, needs and career aspirations, and will learn through a mixture of seminars and self-directed study carefully structured around central themes, analysing current research in highly interactive and critically reflective teaching sessions. As you study, you will put your new knowledge into practice through the application of theories to specific teaching and training contexts. On successful completion of this module, you will have the knowledge and skills to put yourself in a better position to gain employment where intercultural training and education is required, for example in multinational companies, non-governmental organisations, government departments, the education sector and health care industry. This module is open to both home and international students training to become teachers. It is also suited to practising or future teachers, trainers, trainees, educators, coaches, consultants, mentors, curriculum developers and any other professionals in a broad range of fields (e.g. language teaching, content and language integrated learning, media, business, politics, international relations, translation and healthcare). The teaching sessions will be delivered in the English language.

Admissions Live Chat

Open Days

Important Information

Whilst the University will make every effort to offer the modules listed, changes may sometimes be made arising from the annual monitoring and review of modules. Where this activity leads to significant change to a programme and modules, the University will endeavour to consult with affected students. The University may not be able to offer a module for reasons outside of its control, such as the illness of a member of staff. Availability of optional modules may be restricted owing to timetabling, lack of demand, or limited places. Where this is the case, you will be asked to make alternative module choices and you will be supported during this process.

MA GLOBAL INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION