English studies

From Free net encyclopedia

English studies is an academic discipline that studies literatures written in the English language (including literatures from the U.K., U.S., Canada, Australia, Hong Kong, India, South Africa, and the Middle East), English linguistics (including English phonetics, phonology, syntax, morphology, semantics, pragmatics, corpus linguistics, and stylistics), and English sociolinguistics (including discourse analysis of written and spoken texts in the English language, history of the English language, and the study of World Englishes).

English studies explores the production and analysis of texts produced in English (or in areas of the world in which English is a common mode of communication). Academic departments of "English Studies" often include scholars of the English language and the philosophy of language, literature, rhetoric, law, composition studies, literacy, film, technical communication, folklore, cultural studies, creative writing, critical theory, disability studies, area studies, theatre, gender studies, and digital media, among others.

In most English-speaking countries, English studies is practiced in university departments of English, while study of texts produced in other languages takes place in other language departments and in departments of comparative literature. This disciplinary divide is one motivation for the use of the term, as professors of English occasionally find it useful to distinguish themselves from professors of other languages for administrative reasons (thus the North American Modern Language Association is divided into two principal subgroups, the Association of Departments of English and the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages).

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