Words

Catalog description

Words, words, words. Words are the basic units of language, but how do they help us communicate our thoughts? How are they internally constructed? And how do they come together to form complex meanings? How are words from different languages similar, and how are they different? Do words reflect or shape our thought? Do they expand or constrain our imagination? This interdisciplinary course explores what words are and how we think of them. The course brings together insights and ideas from a number of fields: linguistics, philosophy, psychology, sociology, computer science, history, literature, religion, and visual arts to help answer these questions. Students will read materials from a variety of books and articles and discuss them in class, and they will engage in solving and creating language puzzles as they learn how to analyze words in terms of their form, function, and meaning in context. Term projects can range from collection and analysis of linguistic data to multidisciplinary artistic creations.