Sociolinguistics

Catalog description

This course is a comprehensive introduction to theoretical frameworks and methods of analysis in sociolinguistics. We will examine how language variation and change can reflect social structures, construct diverse social identities, and allow us to make sense of our surrounding social landscapes. We will first learn how linguistic variation corresponds to large-scale social categories like gender, age, ethnicity, and class. Then, we will turn our attention to how individual speakers use language to construct identities, portray stances, and achieve interactional goals. Throughout the course, we will consider how ideologies about linguistic variation have been used to invalidate particular ways of speaking and disempower speakers of these varieties, and how language can reflect, reinforce, or contest social inequalities.