Language Society

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

In this course, we will investigate how language shapes and is shaped by society. We will range over many levels of social organization (from nation to neighborhood to individual) as well as many levels of language organization (from pronunciations to conversations to entire languages). We will also consider how sociolinguistic knowledge can be applied to areas such as language policy and planning (including issues pertaining to societal bi- and multilingualism and language endangerment), languages and dialects in education (e.g. the use of students’ home dialects in the classroom), and language and the law (e.g. conducting forensic linguistic analysis of language evidence such as ransom notes, threatening emails and text messages). Students will gain firsthand experience in conducting sociolinguistic analysis of real-world data.