International Communication - Liaison and Advocacy MA

You can choose to write a Dissertation or to take the International Partnership Management module.

Dissertation
You’ll work on the development, execution, and writing-up of an independent research project on a topic of your choice. All students will attend regular research seminars. Individual supervision will provide topic-specific guidance.

International Partnership Management
As the culmination of the MA, this module will give you the opportunity to demonstrate not only your understanding of how theories apply in the real world, but also to show a wide range of research and international communications competences that will serve you in the workplace. Here you’ll have the opportunity to develop and enhance your research competences in a professional rather than a purely academic context. Through your research, you’ll identify a collaborative international business, network or project opportunity on behalf of an employer. You’ll then devise appropriate advocacy, management and communication strategies for the successful implementation of the partnership you have created. The module outputs are in three parts: an initial proposal to the tutors, a project report and a commentary. In this way the module will bring together the theories you’ll have studied throughout the MA, communication competences and linguistic sensitivity as well as demonstrating your own critical and reflective abilities.

This module aims to develop the communication skills necessary to facilitate interaction and engagement in global and bilingual professional settings. It considers current theories and concepts that underpin communication and co-operation in international and transnational contexts and examines the role of international organisations, both inter-governmental and international NGOs in promoting global collaboration in various fields. It provides the knowledge and competencies needed to operate successfully in multi-cultural environments and examines, simulates and critically evaluates the techniques and strategies required to facilitate global bilingual advocacy and international partnerships. It also examines the ethical dimensions and challenges of international liaison. Particular emphasis is placed on the enactment of the role of the international liaison official as facilitator, negotiator, advocate, and representative of others.

This module introduces the key theories of international communication that underpin the MA, and considers how they are applied to current environments. Topics include world system theory, cultural imperialism, language and power and the impact of the rise in the use of technology. As well as analysing the application of these theories in relevant contexts such as international business, public diplomacy and NGOs, the module encourages you to reflect on your own competences and strategies as an international communicator - in both face to face and virtual scenarios, and how you can develop them so as to succeed in increasingly fluid multilingual international contexts.

The module examines a wide range of theorists of intercultural communication and how these can be used to explore concepts of identity and communication strategies. You‘ll be encouraged to explore your own cultural background and how this may impact of your own world views and understandings. You’ll also examine the kinds of challenges that international and intercultural communication can involve and the communication skills and strategies that can be used to cope with those challenges. The module will also require you to apply theories and models critically with a view to refining your own intercultural behaviour in personal and professional contexts.

The module will provide you with an understanding of crucial aspects of ‘issues that transcend national boundaries and cannot be resolved by any one country acting alone’ (UN). You’ll look at key political debates and challenges in our current Century, with a focus on human rights protection and international justice through, for instance, the study of migration pathways and refugees’ struggles. After engaging with dominant ideologies and policies, the module will give you an opportunity to observe how global challenges and related ‘crises’ are conveyed through international media, such as mainstream press, digital platforms, etc. The second part of the module will address forms of counter narratives and resistance to the hegemonic discourses; these will include actions of solidarity, advocacy, and resistance that will be analysed through the study of activism, protests, and artworks. Issues of identity formation, belonging, and citizenship will be discussed in relation to different forms of representation and communication. The module will host a series of guest lectures with experts working in and around global challenges (including NGOs, governmental organizations, collectives and artists).

This module aims to develop a critical understanding of the interaction between language, discourse and power, as it is projected in an institutional communication context. The module is designed to help linguists and communicators to analyse a number of social interactions (speeches, interviews, etc.), institutional discourses (European Union and United Nations) and to reflect on their own discourse building competences in a professional institutional context. The module supports linguists and communicators in understanding how institutional narratives are created and developed.

This module examines concepts and issues in sociolinguistics; research methods; languages and factors such as age, class, gender, ethnicity; language variation, choice, planning, change; language in face to-face interaction.

This module will introduce you to the major theoretical frameworks for studying language contact by exploring the different processes, causes, types, effects, and outcomes that emerge from contact contexts: e.g. bilingualism, pidginization, creolisation, diglossia, borrowing, code-switching, linguistic change. The module adopts a cross-linguistic perspective and will include contexts ranging from dominant language ecologies to cases of severe language endangerment.