Language & Social Identity

4.0 credits

This course introduces how language is used and perceived to mark social characteristics of an individual or group of individuals. We will examine how social identity is constructed linguistically, which linguistic cues are used consciously to denote different social identities, and how most linguistic cues delineating social groups are below conscious awareness. Topics include: prescriptive and descriptive perspectives of language, dialects, accents, language standardization, language and dialect contact, and linguistic profiling.