French and English BA Honours

This module gives you the knowledge and skills necessary to start analysing and describing the English language systematically (according to grammar, morphology and phonology) and prepares you for future modules at Level 5. The module develops your theoretical awareness of spoken and written mediums, how they are structured, and how they can be used as linguistic data. It also gives you a thorough understanding of the concepts of style, register and genre, and introduces you to some of the main historical developments of the English language over time.

The module introduces the core theoretical knowledge, methodologies and fundamental skills required for the study of language and culture. This includes developing a sound understanding of key terms and concepts in addition to the skills needed to produce clear and competent written English in a range of registers and styles appropriate for undergraduate academic study. The module lectures emphasise the interconnectedness of the study of language and culture and introduce you to a variety of methodological approaches, including textual and visual analysis, semiotics, and adaptation. The lectures encourage you to think critically about the construction of meaning in different languages, cultural contexts, and media.

This module introduces a series of ‘keywords’ that have been historically central to the study of literature, and explores these in relation to specific critical approaches to, and theoretical understandings of, literary works.

Beginners, false beginners and intermediate students of French will learn a range of language skills, cultural competencies and critical abilities to enable them to function with a limited to fair degree of linguistic and cultural autonomy in French-speaking countries and the learning environment. Language and culture are taught in an integrated way through task-based and enquiry-based approaches to learning. Student will achieve levels upper A2 (beginners or false beginners) or lower B2 (intermediate) on the CEFR; cultural elements focus on key concepts. Proficiency levels provide an indicative framework only.

This module develops the practical and conceptual foundations of the translation process. In addition to language-specific translation seminars that focus on real-world texts of a gradually more complex but mostly factual and explicit nature, in the translation workshops, you'll be introduced to a range of translation-specific skills, including IT skills as well as basic theoretical concepts as a means of identifying, understanding and resolving translation issues in a practical manner.

This module investigates how language works in texts, and how texts produce their effects through examination of writers’ lexical and grammatical choices. Students analyse how writers’ linguistic choices indicate the attitudes of characters and narrators, and represent characters as powerful or passive. Students discover how analysing the language of literary texts differs from the approaches taken by literary scholars.

This module introduces the study of contemporary and ancient material culture and examines its meaning in social, political and historical perspectives. You'll acquire skills of object analysis and visit London galleries and museums to apply them. You'll examine the social and cultural lives of objects, and how their meaning changes depending on their context and use, by assessing their production, the impact of trade, war and migration on their circulation, and their provenance and politics of ownership and access.

Second-year post-beginner and post-intermediate students of French will learn a range of language skills, cultural competencies and critical abilities to enable you to function with an intermediate to good level of linguistic and cultural autonomy in French-speaking environments. Language and culture are taught through task-based and enquiry-based approaches with special emphasis on the promotion of intercultural understanding. You'll achieve levels upper B1 (post-beginners) or upper B2 (post-intermediates) on the CEFR; cultural elements focus on key events and ideas that have shaped the modern and contemporary French and Francophone world. Proficiency levels provide an indicative framework only.

The module gives you an overview of the history of the English language and focuses on specific lexical and syntactic variants present throughout the ages. It considers texts as discourses in order to demonstrate the varied history of English in all its historical forms through to the present day.

This module examines the literary, social and political concerns of Romanticism and its legacies across the period c.1790-1865. Centring on the idea of ‘revolution’, the module considers how a range of texts (poetry, the novel, non-fictional prose, and paintings) engage with issues as diverse as the natural world, political upheaval, liberty and the rise of the individual, ‘Englishness’ and the nation, gender and sexuality, the role of the artist, and the idea of modernity.

This module examines the literature, society and politics of the Victorian period, an age of considerable change and upheaval. Through close consideration of a range of texts – including poems, novels and visual material – you'll consider responses to pressing social and political issues such as industrialisation and the ‘Condition of England’, scientific developments, faith and doubt, psychology and the mind, gender, sexuality, imperialism and the empire, and decadence and the fin de siècle.

This module introduces you to the key debates and concepts that have been central to the formation of current understandings of memory, and its relationship to culture, history, and representation. Sample topics include slavery and its contemporary legacies; the Holocaust; and 9/11.

The module provides you with the necessary tools to analyse spoken texts in terms of the phonological, lexical, morphosyntactic, and discourse features they display. Texts are analysed as products of discourse, that is, language that is situated in, and takes significance from, particular times and places, and is constructed with a particular purpose.

This module focuses on the role of the reader to the process of textual interpretation. You will be introduced to topics in cognitive poetics to examine the ways in which readers combine their real-world knowledge and their understanding of characters to create discourse worlds, and how they respond to cues in texts to build an understanding of text worlds.

In this module you will examine how those in positions of power use language to create narratives, values and beliefs held by different groups of people in the world. You will explore how language found in the public space reflects values and conventions and how this can change across different societies. The module focuses on the role and purpose of different kinds of social institutions and analyses the means through which they maintain their identity in the international public space and the language they use to do so. You will be shown methods of reading between the lines and how to evaluate the success or otherwise of their communications. This will also be applied to the specific languages you are studying through seminar sessions.

This blended module – which combines lectures, workshops, and online student-to-student collaboration – introduces professional language transposition skills relevant to the communication of current affairs in an increasingly globalised and digitised world. You take ownership of learning, choosing the topics studied and how to manage the synchronous online sessions. International collaborations develop interpersonal and organisational skills, as well as interlingual, intermodal, and intercultural competences. The module prepares you for the year abroad and, for those not going overseas, enables language practice in authentic, professional settings, such as subtitling, voiceover, and interpreting.

This module focuses on key cultural developments that have impacted the Francophone world (according to students’ language of study) through the analysis of pertinent cultural artefacts. It considers the development of each cultural and linguistic area over time up to and including the present day. To do so, the module will identify and focus on cultural artefacts that include text, objects, and audiovisual media such as – but not exclusively – literature, film, individual testimonies, political material, music, museum pieces, and artwork. The module aims to support students’ language learning through the study of these artefacts in the target language. It will also introduce students to key concepts relevant to their culture of study, such as gender, sexuality, race, class, language, and society, thereby developing their research, analytical, and critical thinking skills.

The Final Year Project offers you a choice of three pathways to complete an independent project. (1) The Professional Transcreation Project pathway provides the opportunity to work on a professional brief, creating materials for an organisation's expansion into new markets, with a focus on localisation and transcreation processes. (2) The Translation Project pathway prepares you for translation in a professional context through the completion of an extended translation as well as a critical commentary. It is available to any student who began their studies at Level 4 as an intermediate or proficient speaker of their language of study. (3) The Dissertation pathway offers you the opportunity to propose, research, and write your own project in the form of an extended essay on any topic related to your language and/or culture of study. You are supported in your chosen pathway through the development and application of skills needed for your project, via pathway-specific workshops and tutorials. Additionally, you will be further guided in your own work by your own project supervisor.

This module is designed for final-year students. Students will learn a range of language-specific structures and skills, cultural competencies and critical abilities appropriate to this level which will enable them to function with linguistic and cultural autonomy in a French-speaking environment. Language and culture are taught through task-based and enquiry-based approaches with special focus on intercultural understanding. Students will achieve upper B2 (post-beginners without year abroad), C1 (post-beginners with year abroad or post-intermediates without year abroad) or upper C1- lower C2 level (post-intermediates with year abroad) on the CEFR; cultural content focuses on contemporary topics and issues. Proficiency levels provide an indicative framework only.

In the first part of this module, you'll explore a range of contemporary socio-cultural issues through readings by key theorists and commentators. Indicative topics include mass culture, privilege and intersectionality, cultural appropriation, public culture, bodies in public space, digital culture and surveillance, national culture, citizenship and immigration, and working culture. You'll examine how these issues manifest in everyday life as well as in contemporary art, film, literature, music, and popular culture. In the final part of the module, you'll be supported in developing an individual project in which you critically analyse a cultural issue and a chosen cultural object. This project is assessed through a linked presentation and essay.

This module interrogates cultural constructions of the present by putting the contemporary into conversation with the past. The module will historicise current social concerns and aesthetic forms to question how and why particular cultural flashpoints have become so important. In so doing, this module asks students to question the value of literature today.

This module runs in Semester 2 and allows you to consider how linguistic theory and description can be applied in different ways. In doing so, it shows how linguistics can be applied to real-world problems and workplace contexts and uses your knowledge about linguistics to do so. You may apply the expert linguistic knowledge required to determine the authorship of texts, for example, with accompanying theoretical and methodological understanding of the processes that enable you to do so.

The module allows you a high degree of flexibility to select subjects ranging from the practice of translation to forensic linguistics whilst maintaining a solid focus on the theoretical, analytical and critical thinking associated with the systematic study of language.

This single semester module runs in Semester 1. It introduces students to further and more recent theoretical tools for linguistic description and analysis with an equal focus on form and meaning. It deepens students’ knowledge and understanding of theoretical ideas across all levels of linguistic analysis (phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics) as well as areas that are informed by and inform the development of linguistic theory including linguistic typology, psycholinguistics, and language documentation.

This module explores various forms of cultural and political representation from the Francophone worlds, according to your chosen language. In particular, it examines core themes and issues, such as identity, belonging, and social movements, that are pertinent to the culture of study, considering how local, national, and transnational landscapes have influenced these issues. The module will develop your knowledge of key concepts and theories relevant to the culture of study and encourage the analysis of a wide range of texts, including, but not limited to, literature, film, popular culture, documentary, non-fiction, art, and other visual images.

The way that we talk tells us something about the way we interact with the world around us; it also explains to a certain extent the behaviour of those who see and hear us. Why, for instance, are some types of multilingualism seen as 'good' ('Trump’s grandchildren can already speak Mandarin, aren’t they clever'), while others are seen as 'bad' ('Spanish should be abolished in American primary schools')? In the sorts of contexts that we live in, society is structured in such a way that it benefits those who talk a certain way ('Speak the Queen’s English to get on in life'), and systematically disadvantages others who do not talk a certain way ('You’ll never get anywhere talking like that'). This has consequences that affect us as individuals, and language as a whole. In this module on multilingualism, you'll be asked to interrogate these processes. The module will introduce seminal texts that provide the analytical framework for exploring languages and language use in very disparate societies and cultures. At the same time, the module has a strong practical component: you'll draw on a range of empirical data (both quantitative and qualitative), as well as your own lived experiences, in order to model the relationships between language and society. In the lectures and language-specific seminars, there will be a particular emphasis on the interface between language use and ideologies, policy, the media, education and wider socio-political and cultural formations.

Across the globe, gender is a key principle of social organisation which defines the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion in both domestic and public life. Gender is fundamental to ideas about social order and power. Protest is a vital force for political and social change, particularly for changing conversations about gender. As such, this module considers the relationship between gender and protest. In particular, it considers the importance of protest in shaping both popular and theoretical constructions of gender across a range of cultural contexts, including, but not limited to, Latin America, East Asia, and Europe.

From the mid-1800s to the present, ideas around sexuality and the politics of desire have been central to many literary and cultural artefacts. In this module, you'll examine the construction and deployment of notions of sexuality across that time period. Through close examination of a range of novels, poems, films and television series, you’ll consider how understandings of, and engagements with, sexuality have been represented. As you consider homosexuality, queerness, trans* identities, and heterosexuality, you’ll interrogate ideas of identity, the body, intimacy, desire, history, and representation.

This is a work experience placement associated with employment with an appropriate employer that you as a graduate might eventually join, such as a small or large business, an arts organisation or a subject-based placement in a school.

Assessment consists of a portfolio which you'll complete. You'll need to source your own placement. Support is provided via three face-to-face teaching sessions: one introductory session, one session focused on the assessment, and one drop-in session to discuss work towards the assessment. You are also strongly encouraged to make full use of the support offered by discussing your placement and coursework with the module leader during the semester. In cases where you are unable to secure a placement by the end of the first week of the semester, or where a placement has fallen through, the University will support and facilitate a change in module.