HENK00027U English, 2013 curriculum - Free topic 17: The Influence of English

English is no longer the first language of an empire; it is the second language of most of the world – and exerts a tremendous influence on first languages worldwide, including Danish. That impact is what this course seeks to unravel, based on recent research in contact linguistics.

The English influence – including its covert forms – will be scrutinized from lexical, grammatical, pragmatic and language-political perspectives. Students will be encouraged to do empirical work on the influence of English as encountered in speech and writing, in books and newspapers, in films, on TV, in the social media, etc.

Using corpus linguistic tools, students may be able to study in detail the various echoes of English resonating in other languages, e.g. by deciphering Anglified sound patterns, by comparing Anglicisms in original and translated novels, or by monitoring the rise and/or fall of English-inspired expressions in non-Anglophone speech communities.

Non-Danish students are encouraged to participate, as several recipient languages will teach us more than just one, e.g. Danish.

The home paper concluding the course may range from being a theoretical essay over a corpus-based study to a commented dictionary of (a sub-category of) Anglicisms.