Language, Culture and Thought
Syllabus, Bachelor's level, 5LN245
- Code
- 5LN245
- Education cycle
- First cycle
- Main field(s) of study and in-depth level
- General Linguistics G1F
- Grading system
- Pass with distinction (VG), Pass (G), Fail (U)
- Finalised by
- The Department Board, 28 August 2026
- Responsible department
- Department of Linguistics and Philology
Entry requirements
30 credits in a language subject
Learning outcomes
For the grade Pass, after completing the course the student should be able to
- describe common and distinctive features of the world's languages, with a focus on the relationship between language and culture
- highlight the close relationship between language and culture from different perspectives, such as language structure, conversation patterns, language development, translation and literature
- explain the main theories of the relationship between language and thought, and between language and culture
- reason about the relationship between language and identity using relevant linguistic terms and illustrate their reasoning with their own examples
- describe the differences between written and unwritten culture
- illustrate with concrete examples the connections between some metaphors and their culture-specific features
- apply theoretical knowledge in analyzing given linguistic materials
- present their analysis in a scientific way.
Content
The course provides an overview of research on the intersection between language, culture, and cognition. Linguistic research from several areas will be presented, and we will discuss of a number of case studies. These cover, for example, linguistic relativity, language universals, language and the mind, the role of social factors on language variation, functional constraints on language variation, cross-cultural semantics/pragmatics, metaphors and cognition, and multilingual cognition.
Instruction
The teaching consists of lectures, practicals, and assessment. The student's own learning activities are of crucial importance for the work on the course.
Assessment
Assessment for the course has two parts:
- an oral presentation
- written assignments.
Information about the content and format of the oral presentation and the written assignments is provided at the start of the course.
If there are special reasons for doing so, an examiner may make an exception from the method of assessment indicated and allow a student to be assessed by another method. An example of special reasons might be a certificate regarding special pedagogical support from the University's disability coordinator.
Other regulations
The course may not be included in the degree as a freestanding course if equivalent materials have been studied in another course included in the degree.