Language, Religion, and Ethnicity

(3 Credits)

What is language? Where is language? What are religion and ethnicity? What is the connection between them? The seminar offers a linguistic view of religion and ethnicity and looks into the sociolinguistic history, society, and culture of the US and the Arab world. We will consider the great diversity of communicative systems we encounter as a source of enrichment for individuals and the nation. We will also study the universal phenomenon of language change and how it affects our understanding of language behavior religiously and ethnically. Students will explore core concepts of linguistics with an emphasis on descriptive linguistics and sociolinguistics. Students will employ sociolinguistic methods to examine the relationship between language and ethnicity, language and nationalism, language and power, language and religion, language and gender, language and space, and language and education. We will explore some pockets of language use in the UAE (such as the Shiḥḥi tribe in RAK) as an opportunity to conduct field study, using the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet),sociolinguistic interviews, and the method of Linguistic Landscape.