Integral to language acquisition, making it significant in terms of the general aims of the university, is the acquisition of `cultural competence'. This is understood as the development of skills in the description and analysis of the social construction of reality. Students will learn to appreciate the construction of the individual and collective self (ie concerning both personal and national identity) in a peculiarly French light.
The modes of social construction studied are various: literary, cinematographic, historical, journalistic, graphic. They range from high art to popular culture and they are canonical and marginal. Students' varying interests are fully recognised.
Students will develop the ability to recognise the specificity of French cultural constructs, especially in contrast with competing and various Anglo-Saxon constructs of `Frenchness'.
At a minimal level, students should be able to analyse the basic processes through which a variety of texts using French produce meaning. At advanced levels, students should be able to understand and apply competing theoretical models of analysis of social constructs, in particular those developed by French theorists. Assimilation of mere descriptions of social or cultural constructs is not considered a form of knowledge: knowledge is founded on skills of critical analysis transferable from one construct to another. All students are encouraged to develop these skills, thus enabling them to carry out research and other academic work independently.
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