Portuguese and Brazilian Studies/Portuguese (B.A.) (2 subjects)

In the area of language practice, you will practice and expand the four skills of listening, reading, speaking and writing on the basis of the European Framework of Reference (from level A1 to B2), to develop your receptive and productive competence in oral and written communication. You will analyse and compare various aspects of German and Portuguese grammar. All courses in language practice include some aspects of regional and cultural studies (such as history, culture, politics, etc.) of Portugal and the other parts of the lusophone world.

The purpose of linguistics is to examine the structure and usage of contemporary Portuguese and its historical development (e.g. the description of phonetic structure, vocabulary and grammar). The basic principles, core areas and methods of Portuguese linguistics are taught in the relevant courses. We make a point of offering a wide range of courses from traditional Romance language areas, such as historical linguistics, generative syntax and dialectology, as well as covering modern questions of discourse linguistics and cognitive semantics. The goal here is to enable students to carry out independent work using modern linguistic methods (e.g. computational linguistics).

Literary studies deal with the lusophone literatures and cultures, and their history from the medieval beginnings to the 21st century. You will be familiarized with various methods of text interpretation and literary theories, whose diversity opens up a great variety of approaches to text analysis and other forms of media processing (e.g. film). In the literary studies courses, some specific eras and works are dealt with in more detail. Some research areas in Portuguese-language literary studies are the Portuguese literature of the Middle Ages and early modern era, as well as the 19th and 20th centuries, cultural transfer, imagology and literary gender studies.

In regional and cultural studies, you will acquire basic knowledge about the history, economics, politics, society and culture of Portugal, Brazil and lusophone Africa, using theories from the social and cultural sciences. The acquisition of regional and cultural knowledge includes the development of intercultural competence to enable you to reflect on both your own and the foreign culture, and to comprehend the two cultures as dynamic, living and multifaceted systems. In the advanced courses, this basic knowledge is expanded using specific examples.

The degree programme includes one module to impart knowledge about using and designing media to process and present subject-specific content. Here you will also learn how to critically analyse content presented via various media.