Word and Image: Constructing the Other in the Hispanic World (Level 5)

• Credit value: 30 credits at Level 5
• Convenors: Professor Carmen Fracchia, Professor Maria Elena Placencia
• Assessment: a 2500-word linguistic analysis or essay (50%) and 2500-word essay (50%)

This module offers an introduction to the exploration of the historical origins of otherisation in the Hispanic world and to the analysis of the linguistic means employed in its construction in present-day contexts. It will introduce you to key concepts and approaches to the study of stereotyping from two different perspectives - visual analysis and pragmatics - equipping you with the relevant critical and analytical skills. In the visual analysis, we will consider the cases of the sixteenth-century miracle of the black leg in Castile by a group of sculptors who moved in the circle of Cardinal Cisneros, involved in the transatlantic slave trade, and of the seventeenth-century legal battles against the black brotherhood in Seville, promoted by the archbishop of the economic capital of the Spanish empire. From a pragmatics perspective, the focus will be on selected social media contexts from the Spanish-speaking world.

Indicative module syllabus

Word in the construction of the Other:

• Studying discursive racism: perspectives
• Im/politeness theory, with a focus on impoliteness: key concepts and approaches
• Analysing racial insults and slurs
• Some features of digital discourse and social media
• Methodology and methodological issues in the study of discursive racism

Image in the construction of the Other:

• Studying the different concepts of humanity/race in the Hispanic early modern period, with a focus on policies of purity of blood; Mediterranean and Transatlantic slave trades
• Analysing the visual articulation of race in the early modern Hispanic world
• Hispanic visual conventions and discourses of exclusion/inclusion of others
• Hispanic visual culture and the articulation of stereotypical/non-stereotypical figures

By the end of this module, you will have:

• an understanding of key concepts and approaches to the study of otherisation in the Hispanic world
• the ability to analyse images and social media discourse in a systematic way, with reference to the perspectives studied on the course
• awareness of methodological issues in the study of images and digital discourse.