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School of Social Sciences and International Studies
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

Arts 2844
Language and Politics

Semester 1, 2011

Table of Contents

1.Staff Contact……………………………………………………….. ……..p. 3

2. Course Details………………………………………………………….,pp.3-4

3. Rationale of Course……………………………………………………….. p.4

4. Teaching Strategies………………………………………………………..p.4

5.Course Schedule…………………………………………………………… pp.4-8

6. Resources for Students…………………………………………………………………..pp.8-9 7. Assessment………………………………………………………………pp. 9-10 8. Assessment Details…………………………………………………………………….pp.10-15

9.Submission of Assignments………………………………………………pp.15-16

10.Duties of Teachers……………………………………………………… p16.

11. Course Policies…………………………………………………………pp.16-18

1.Teaching Staff: Contact Details

Professor Gavin Kitching, Room MB 143, 1st Floor, Morven Brown Building.

Email: g.kitching@unsw.edu.au

Tel: 9385 3624

2.Course Details

Arts 2844 is an upper level 6 point credit course in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.

Course Summary
Language and politics are closely related. This is true in the obvious sense that language use is central to the practice of politics – to all political debate and persuasion, and to the construction of arguments that we call ‘political’. But it is also true in the less obvious sense that philosophical debates about the nature of language have played an important role in the study of politics. People who believe that the study of politics can and should be ‘scientific’, have frequently tried to find, or create, an ‘analytical’ language about politics that is free from the ‘bias’, ‘prejudice’ and conflictual ‘ideology’ of the language used in politics. And people who are more skeptical about the possibility of creating a political science (or a social science more generally) have often doubted whether such a ‘scientific’ language of politics, or of society, can be created.

This course is about both