In this course participants will be introduced to how grammatical analysis can be embedded into social critical analyses of texts, moving from detailed grammatical analysis to methods for evaluating both whether the analysis has been performed accurately and whether one has actually found differences between texts are not. The main kind of grammatical analysis that will be introduced and practised is transitivity. Transitivity is the part of grammar that encodes the speaker or writer's view of reality--literally the 'who did what' part of grammar. We will explore a wide range of English texts in order to practice recognising the basic types of transitivity patterns in English. The main emphasis will be on doing, so that all success-ful course participants will become proficient in analysing texts according to their transitivity. Particular attention will then be paid to evaluating the reliability of analyses and to demonstrating whether or not bodies of data actually exhibit statistically significant differences.

Information will be available online and the entire course will be studyable online. Classes will be held to the extent that the circumstances allow.