Mediatization of Language, Culture and Everyday Life

The core focus of this course is to analyze how language transforms as a social and cultural phenomenon under the influence of contemporary media. The mediatization of language approach aims to explain the expression of language in various contemporary media forms, including those of professional media and social networks. In this course, language is mainly discussed as a communicative phenomenon whose contemporary role and development are strongly influenced by digital technologies and the media features supported by global platforms (Meta, Google, Microsoft). Not only is there a great deal of observation and analysis exercises applied in this course, but the dynamics of media-sustained linguistic expression are analyzed in a wide range of media-supported everyday activities like politics, learning, activism, and entertainment.

In this course, a wide-ranging perspective of digitalization and media-inspired societal change is gradually narrowed down to the analysis of language and its changing expressionism, role, and functions in media-sustained everyday situations.

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1.1. Introduction and course overview. Language as a means of communication: the communications approach to studying the phenomenon of language. 1.2. Language as a medium: From mediation to mediatization. 1.3. ‘Mediatization’ as an analytical paradigm. Language and media as ‘arena’ and ‘window’ to culture and everyday life. 1.4. Media as an institution, language, text, and cultural reproduction: Understanding the cycle of ‘media production’ and elements of media logic. 2.1. Language and the mediatized reality: Understanding media technological affordances (digitalization, platformization, convergence, transmediality, interactivity) and language uses and expressions (of power, conflict, uncertainty, manipulations). 3.1-2. In-class workshops and interactive exercises 4.1. Mediatization of … (politics and government communication). Mediatization of … (sports and popular culture: fashion, beauty, gender representations). Mediatization of … (disaster: conflict, war, migration, crisis, and global threats). Mediatization of … (the otherness: segregated groups in society). Mediatization of … (childhood and family life: schooling, education). Mediatization of … (falsehood: fake news, disinformation, propagation). 5.1. In-class workshops and interactive exercises. 6.1. Student presentations. 7.1. Media awareness, language change and reflexive media education

1. Students gain knowledge and understanding of theoretical definitions and concepts (such as social change, transformation, liquidity, convergence, hybridization) that are required to analyze the phenomenon of language from a communicative perspective. 2. Students gain critical awareness and understanding of contextual (cultural) conditions and factors influencing language practices, linguistic expressions, and media production processes. 3. Students present written (or otherwise designed/produced) assignments for which various interactive techniques will be necessary such as idea generation, interviewing, ethnographic study analysis, photo-voice, poster sessions, and other means of graphic facilitation, and creative writing. 4. Students generate relevant research questions and support analysis of those with appropriate research designs. 5. Students perform various roles – those from being idea generators and discussion moderators, to active listeners. 6. Students gain experience in data collection, analysis and production of mediated texts; they also learn how to generate graphically inventive and resourceful research designs: for such purposes they learn how to apply various techniques such as interactive storytelling and info-graphics. 7. Students perform various roles in planned classroom situations, and reflect on their own learning activities.