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This course will examine the ways in which the field of linguistics sheds light on the analysis and study of written discourse. First, the two core components of the course will be outlined: a short survey of linguistics and a brief history of the development of writing systems will be given. Then, we will briefly explore several ideological topics: the advantages of literacy and the power of discourse. After investigating what texts are and several text types, the remainder of the class will focus on investigating the ways in which linguistics can give insight to understanding and analyzing written texts. Four general areas of analysis will be discussed: 1) the discourse level (topics include relevance, topic, coherence, cohesion, style, genre, register), 2) the sentential level (a variety of syntactic tools will be discussed and analyzed, including reference, substitution, ellipsis, and conjunction), 3) the lexical level (topics include word choice and coining new words), and 4) the semiotic level (the use of visual space in discourse will be briefly considered).
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