Modern Languages (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 module will clarify the links between the Year Abroad Portfolio 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...

How do writers and filmakers grapple with the difficulties of remembering events that many would rather forget? How do they seek to represent events that seem to defy representation? In tackling these questions, this module provides you with a fascinating...

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

This module explores various aspects of the French language from the perspective of modern linguistics: phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax and lexis

This module will problematize the concept of globalisation and explore and develop an understanding of its meaning in economic, political and cultural terms. Furthermore, we will examine the ideological struggle between competing forces over the nature an...

What developments led to the headscarf and the so-called ‘burka ban’ in France? Why has ‘multiculturalism’ been a taboo subject? To what extent have anti-racism associations been a success in combating racism? This module offers you the opportunity to gai...

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...

This module is designed to explore in detail the key areas of feminism, postcolonial theory, and cultural semiotics i.e. the analysis of cultural signs, whether in visual culture, such as advertising, political culture, or based in cultural practices. Th...

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

This module builds on the basic concepts of articulatory phonetics introduced in the first year, and introduces theory and methodology of acoustic science for the study of the production and perception of speech sounds.

This module will provide introduce you to the study of syntax within current linguistic theory.

This module 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...

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...

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...

Philosophy of language explores the nature of meaning, language, and communication. What is it for a word or sentence – things which in and of themselves are simply noises or marks on a page – to mean something? What is it for a word to refer to something...

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...

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 is designed to accompany you as you resume your programme of studies in Southampton and grapple with the challenges of re-entry. We will support you as you reflect upon your experience of study abroad, enable you to articulate those experience...

W.B. Yeats writes 'The Second Coming'. Jean Sibelius composes his seventh symphony. Paul Cezanne paints his tenth picture of Mont Sainte-Victoire. All three are clearly acting in artistically creative ways; but how should we understand what they do, wh...

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...

Where does the idea of a stateless person come from? Why did France become one of the foremost nations for refugee reception? How were refugees fleeing from persecution in other parts of Europe treated in France? Why did France establish a system of ‘conc...

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...

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...

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...

This module 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...

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.

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...

This module provides an insight into the cognitive processes involved in the acquisition of language. Different theories of first and second language acquisition will be examined and critically assessed in the light of empirical evidence. Various factors ...

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 gain in LING 2011 Variation and Change in English and the instrumental analysis techniques from LING 2008 Sound and Voice. Through a series of computer, lab-based sessions, students test ...

The module examines selected written texts and films in the areas of travel, cultural encounter and identity. These will cover a variety of topics and cross-cultural encounters, within the broad area of Francophone film and non-fiction writing. Critical...

The module 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 w...

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...

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 module aims to introduce and explain some central themes of Heidegger’s early masterpiece, Being and Time. It will explore central concepts such as Being-in-the-world and authenticity and how they relate to established philosophical issues, including...

There is a rich and often overlooked tradition of Islamic philosophy, or 'falsafa'. This module focuses on the classical period of the Islamic Golden Age, from Al-Kindi, via Ibn Sina (also known as Avicenna), to Ibn Rushd (also known as Averroes). The cla...

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...

For most of us, there is nothing more fundamental than our ability to interact with other people. We cooperate and compete in complex ways. Competing and cooperating in these complex ways requires that we understand and respond to many aspects of each oth...

Philosophical logic provides tools for the rigorous study of some of the most central notions of philosophy and of ordinary thought - for instance, necessity and possibility (modal logic), time (temporal logic), moral obligation (deontic logic), and knowl...

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.

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...

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...

Schopenhauer is one of the great original writers of the nineteenth century, and a unique voice in the history of thought. His central concept of the will leads him to a pessimistic view of existence: he regards human beings as striving irrationally and ...

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...

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...

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 ...