American Culture Studies: Themes and Methodology

Year 2002, Issue: 15, 55 - 60, 01.04.2002

Diana Yankova

Abstract

Introduction. The paper presents the topics and rationale behind the American Cultural Studies course taught at the Applied Linguistics Department, New Bulgarian University. It focuses on how US history, geography, politics have shaped American society. The second part of the paper presents a classroom activity exemplifying an approach following Brogger 1992 : from historical and social analysis, through the cultural analysis of dominant belief systems, to the textual analysis of the ways these belief systems are encoded in the language of written sources.

References

• Brogger, Fredrik Chr. Culture, Language, Text, Scandinavian University Press, Oslo,1992.
• Degler, Carl N., Out of Our Past, 3rd edition, New York, Harper Colophon Books, 1984.
• Yankova D., Andreev A. “Cultural Awareness In The Foreign Language Classroom”, Foreign Language Teaching. 2001; 27-33.