Linguistics: Sociolinguistics

Exploration of language and nonverbal interactions as cultural activities. Focus on rules and patterns people display appropriate to communication and social interaction. Prerequisites: LING 1500 or ANTH 1600.

Prereqs enforced by the system: LING 1500 or ANTH 1600 PACE students with permission and override

This course explores language and nonverbal interaction as socially and culturally embedded activities. We begin by investigating the theoretical underpinnings of sociolinguistics as a discipline, including qualitative (ethnography-based) and quantitative (variationist) approaches. We then look more narrowly at particular social impacts on communication that involve regionality, socioeconomics, race/ethnicity, gender/sex/sexuality, and their intersections. Along the way, we examine the linguistic structures, conversational rituals, and other patterned behaviors that speakers recruit for specific communicative reasons or contexts. From a communities of practice lens, we also analyze the expression of subjective stances and the “performance” of social identity during conversation.

With consistent, hard work in this course, you should be able to: -Explain a variety of ways that language and social forces interact -Sketch the progression of ideas at the birth of sociolinguistics as a subfield -Become familiar with various methodological approaches to sociolinguistic research -Analyze language and nonverbal communication across social variables -Understand how social variables intersect and thereby impact discourse and social identity -Cite examples of how speakers construct social identities and encode stances in discourse, including not only verbal resources, but also nonverbal, interactive, and situational ones -Learn about recent research trends in sociolinguistics, especially work on the role of communities of practice, indexicality, and intersectionality in discourse

Group projects: 50% Summary-response assignments: 30% Individual research project: 20%