RATIONALE FOR THE COURSE ORGANIZATION

1. This course has a series of assigned readings, introducing concepts associated with intercultural communication (assignments in the Novinger book, in Hall, and in Basso), and to interpersonal communication (assignments in the Tannen book).

2. This is also a lecture and discussion course, in which the lectures are designed to introduce the student to concepts of language, culture, and communication in general. This involves an introduction to some of the critical terms (jargon) of linguistics, semiotics, and anthropology as well as a general framework for discussing the ways in which these terms are related to one another and to the workings of culture in communication and of communication in culture. The lectures are based in part on the book Language, Culture, and Communication by Nancy Bonvillain, and in part on the lecturer's field experiences at home and abroad. Spoken language is a complicated formal system of communication, embedded in other interacting and interrelated systems of communication by means of which we understand and make ourselves understood; by means of which we live and love, learn and share, teach and lie; by means of which we tell stories and construct the histories and taxonomies that constitute our internalized realities. Because spoken language is so important to communication, we start the semester by learning a little about its form, analyzing its structure, and illustrating how it is employed in the communicative act that can be studied as a speech act.

3. The course also includes a small number of films that illustrate crucial concepts as well as the workings of culture changes as they impact intercultural communication, and also some ways in which communicative systems in other societies differ significantly from our own.

4. As a writing component course, 3 written projects are assigned on the syllabus, an informal assignment and two formal ones generated from instructions given on the following link: (http://www.utexas.edu/courses/stross/ant307_files/project.htm). If further instructions are required, they can be taken up in class or by e-mail.

The themes that constitute foci this semester include:

Politics and propaganda: Information, misinformation, and disinformation

Speech play, verbal art and memory (learning, education)

Interpersonal communication and Intercultural communication

Understanding, not understanding, and misunderstanding

Institutional communication (school, law, medicine, newsmedia, advertising, military, governance)

Technology and Communication