Introduction to Language and Culture

Catalog description

This introductory course serves as a foundation for understanding language from an anthropological perspective, addressing such core questions as how, what, when, where, why and with whom do we communicate. This course surveys three core areas in linguistic anthropology--structural linguistics: phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics, as well as the complex biocultural interface of the brain and genetics in language production; historical linguistics: origins and evolution/change, dialects, and language families; and sociocultural linguistics: language acquisition in cultural context, emphasizing the relationship between language and culture, and issues of language conservation and loss.