Language Diversity & Cultural Identity

Catalog description

Culture, language, and identity are intimately tied together. Individuals, families, communities, and nations identify themselves in relation to the language or languages they speak. Local, national, and international governmental organizations make choices about the language or languages they recognize and use for political and economic affairs. The United Nations even recognizes language as integral to maintaining the cultural heritage of communities and peoples around the world, and the freedom to choose ones language of expression as a universal human right. In this course, we will explore a variety of questions, advantages, and challenges related to language diversity and cultural identity across the globe. Our main focus will be on contexts of multilingualism that is, contexts in which two or more languages may be used. Adopting a comparative case study approach, we will explore the following themes: (i) The historical underpinnings of language diversity and its consequences for cultural identity today (e.g., migration, colonization, conquest); (ii) How language diversity and cultural identity shapes, and is shaped by, local, regional, national, and international politics; (iii) The relationship between language diversity and language use and visibility in public spaces (i.e., the linguistic landscape); (iv) Relations between linguistic communities (e.g., majority and minority language users) and the sense of belonging to a culture. The course is taught in English. Students who wish to take the course as a LCAL major or minor elective will need to complete their final project on a topic relevant to the language they study. Course Website: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RU2iXs7Vyc-6F-HRozPu7_YdV7oYuOGn/view