French and Philosophy (BA)

The 17th and 18th centuries, a period of great intellectual and social upheaval, saw the rise of Modern Philosophy. In continental Europe, the 'Rationalism' of Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz argued for the capacity of reason to arrive at knowledge and und...

The aim of every language course at the University is to enable you to communicate in your target language (TL) at that particular level and in your particular area of interest. We use the word ‘communicate’ in its widest sense, meaning that you will not ...

The module will clarify the links between the Year Abroad project and modules in years two and four.

You might watch a stunning film, hear a delightful song, enjoy a beautiful sunset, read a dreadful poem, attend an elegant dance, or see a garish building. Experiences like this can stimulate thoughts and feelings of great depth, and provide pleasure or d...

This module will introduce you to psychoanalytic theories of trauma and their relation to post-war film and literature in French. You will be asked to consider how writers and filmakers have sought to remember both national and personal traumas, and how...

This course highlights and analyses the link between language structure and its situation of occurrence.

Epistemology is dedicated to questions about the nature and structure of knowledge and justified belief. Some central questions in epistemology include: - What is knowledge? Why is it valuable? - To gain knowledge from a reliable source, does one n...

Ethics of Global Poverty examines the duties of affluent people towards those living in poverty around the world. Among the questions we will examine are: What obligations do we have to help strangers in need? What bases might such obligations have? Are s...

This module involves the ethical evaluation of public policies. Note that it is not primarily concerned with how public policies are made and implemented, nor with non-ethical assessment of them, such as how effective they are in achieving their aims. The...

This module explores the French language from different perspectives in linguistics.

This module will problematize the concept of globalisation and explore and develop an understanding of its meaning in economic, political and cultural terms.

This module gives students a practical understanding of the importance of the questions of immigration, race and ethnicity in France.

Among philosophers in the modern era, Immanuel Kant is widely acknowledged as the most important, original and influential. His challenging book, Critique of Pure Reason, asks what we can know about the nature of reality at the most fundamental level. Can...

Ever since Aristotle, philosophers have been interested in developing formal systems of logic to refine our ability to distinguish valid from invalid arguments and to further our understanding of the nature of logic and validity. The aim of this module is...

We all make moral judgments and think about moral questions. For instance, you might think that torture is typically wrong but wonder whether it may sometimes be right. Whereas normative ethics tries to answer these questions, metaethics is concerned with...

Metaphysics is the study of what kinds of things there and what they are like in the most general terms. We have both a common sense picture of the world and a scientific picture of the world, and sometimes these two appear to conflict. Part of the job of...

Moral philosophy is concerned with questions of right and wrong, good and bad, virtue and vice. Such questions are familiar: can it be right to lie to someone to avoid hurting their feelings? Is it okay to favour my friends and family, or should I be impa...

This module will introduce you to the notion of ‘Multilingualism’, how this is understood and represented in different ways, and why it matters to you. You will explore how people become multilingual, and whether it makes a difference if multilinguals are...

Can there be a proof that God exists? Or might phenomena such as suffering serve to show that an omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent being cannot exist? Such questions are central to the philosophy of religion; attempting to answer them leads us to ...

We build our world on scientific knowledge, in fact we stake our lives on it. Every time we board a train, send an email or take a medical drug we reaffirm our trust in the products of science. But what, if anything, gives science the authority it seems t...

This unit provides an introduction to the study of French post-war French thought and society.

This course examines three areas of psycholinguistics which help to understand what the relationship between language and the human mind might be.

This course builds on the basic concepts of phonetics introduced in the first year, with an introduction to acoustic science for the study of speech sounds.

This course will provide you with an introduction to syntax within current linguistic theory.

This unit will introduce you to key issues, concepts and methods in teaching English as a second/foreign language.

The course seeks to provide an overview of the evolution of the European Union (EU) from its early stages to the present. In so doing, it examines the ideas and history of the EU, the institutions of the EU, examples of specific issue areas and the presen...

Philosophy of mind explores questions about the nature of the mind and mental states – states such as perceptual experiences, beliefs, desires, and emotions. What is the mind? Is it an immaterial substance? Is it the brain? Is it something like a computer...

This module takes an empirical approach to questions such as: - Are there patterns of speech and language associated with males and females in varieties of English? - What is the role of teenagers in the propagation of change in English? - After a...

The YEAR Abroad Research Project is a 6000 word piece of independent academic writing which you complete in the target language during your residence abroad (or during the summer between your second and final year, in case of exemption from the Year Abroa...

The aim of every language course at the University is to enable you to communicate in your target language at that particular level and in your particular area of interest. We use the word ‘communicate’ in its widest sense, meaning that you will not only ...

This unit will allow students to undertake independent research to produce an in-depth study of a specific topic located in one of the fields within Modern Languages.

Students taking this module undertake research on a philosophical topic of their choice (subject to approval by the Department), and write a dissertation of 8,000 words on that topic.

This module will introduce you to the different types of audiovisual translation and the various kinds of subtitles produced nowadays. You will learn about the interaction between text and image and the technical issues and constraints involved in creatin...

Philosophy flourished in classical India for well over a millennium, with figures in this tradition producing works that are on a par with those of figures in ancient Greece and late antique and medieval Europe. In fact, figures in classical India contri...

The aim of this module is to familiarise you with several important, but competing, theories of justice. Such theories give guidance on important questions of distributive justice (who ought to get what, when and why?), and provide, to varying degrees, gr...

This module explores the rise of English as a global language focusing on the factors that have led to, and the issues that have arisen from, its dominant status. You will learn about the interrelation between globalisation, standardisation and variabilit...

We are all familiar with fictions from Romeo and Juliet to Jaws, from The Hobbit to Harry Potter. Despite this familiarity, the nature of fiction and of our engagement with it appears puzzling. On the one hand, fictional characters do not exist. On the ot...

This option will examine the relationship between French identity and culture since 1981 with the elections of François Mitterrand by exploring the ways in which identities of different social groups are expressed within the economic, political and cultur...

This module in French sociolinguistics aims to build on and re-evaluate your existing knowledge of the French language from a sociolinguistic perspective. The module has three major themes: language change, language variation and language identity in rela...

It seems clear that people’s lives can go well or badly. But what is it for one’s life to go well? Does it consist in feeling good more often than feeling bad? Or getting most of what you want? Or does it consist in achievement, friendship, knowledge and ...

This unit examines the theory and practice of language teaching and explores 'reflective practice' as a set of skills that can be applied to your future working life.

This module develops awareness of how language testing and assessment have developed in educational and wider social contexts. It focusses on both purposes and processes of language testing and assessment, and critically examines applications in policy ar...

One of the socially and culturally most significant consequences of transnational mobility is that urban populations in particular are increasingly multilingual: in global cities such as London, New York and Berlin there are speakers of hundreds of differ...

Reading the works of Friedrich Nietzsche is both exciting and troubling. He sets out to undermine the basis of many of our beliefs about values. Christianity, he believed, has had a powerfully negative effect on the potential of human beings. His method o...

The science of psychology and the project of artificial intelligence raise profound philosophical issues as they attempt to understand, simulate and even go beyond human thought. Some concern the kind of explanation that these ventures seek: If we underst...

In this module you will explore some major philosophical questions related to sex. We will begin by considering the nature of sex, discussing a range of theories of sex including the traditional view of sex as essentially connected to reproduction and “pl...

This module will provide students with both a practical and theoretical insight into the role of a Public Service Interpreter. Beginning with a general introduction to interpreting, it will go on to focus more in depth on the wide range of issues and chal...

Socrates wants to cross a river and comes to a bridge guarded by Plato, who says: “Socrates, if you say something true, I will permit you to cross. But if you speak falsely, I shall throw you into the water.” Socrates answers: “You will throw me into the ...

The aims of this module are to explore some central issues about the relationship between action, reason, and ethics. Questions we shall consider may include: What is an action? What is it to act intentionally? What are reasons for action? Do all, some, o...

We seem to know our own minds - our beliefs, desires, intentions, thoughts, feelings and sensations - in a distinctively secure and immediate way, without having to rely on observation of our own behaviour. Such self-knowledge seems different from knowled...

Fuelled by the sexual revolution, the women’s movement and gay activism, the late twentieth century saw a flourishing of critical interest in questions of sex, gender and desire and their relation to literature and culture. This module will develop your u...

This final year module builds on the theoretical grounding students gained in LING 2011 Variation and Change in English and the instrumental analysis techniques from LING 2008 Sound and Voice. In Sociophonetic Project Module, students will put the theory ...

The climate crisis is one of the most urgent issues facing humanity. Climate change is having an increasing impact on individual lives, and on social and political relations and institutions. This module examines the moral and political philosophical issu...

Translation plays a major role in the exchange and circulation of practical information and culture production. This means that even if they do not enter the translation profession, in a society that is increasingly global, Modern Linguists are frequently...

This course will explore travel writing and cultural encounter across a range of film and written texts. We will look at tourism and leisure and at tourism as exploitation; at the politics of guidebooks, and the quest for authenticity through travel; at ...

It is commonplace to hear people say such things as, ‘You shouldn’t believe that God exists—look at all the evil in the world’, or ‘You ought to believe that there is life on other planets—it’s entirely probable’, and the like. These judgements concerning...

Wittgenstein is the most important philosopher of the twentieth century. He offers a sustained critique of many of the most common assumptions underlying much contemporary philosophy of mind and language. He explores, among other things, the questions of ...

The unit will take you through the process, the product and the place of writing. Process will deal primarily with modelling cognitive operations, analysis of composing strategies, and individual differences and changes in processes over time. Product wil...