Language and Migration: Individual, Social and Institutional Perspectives

Undergraduate / Graduate

This class offers a broad range of perspectives on issues regarding language in the context of migration. For instance we analyze the ways in which language has been instrumentalized by Nation-States to regiment and restrain the mobility of targeted populations. We deconstruct the straightforward correlation between socio-economic integration and language competence in discourse produced by politicians and some academics alike. We also analyze how different types of mobility (e.g., slavery, colonization, and free individual migration) produce, at different times, differing sociolinguistic dynamics.