Introduction to Language.

Catalog description

This course is an introduction to the central role of language in cultures and societies. Emphasis is on social and regional language variation, language and prejudice, gender and social class differences in conversation styles, the history and evolution of languages, and societal attitudes toward language and socio-political-economic influences on language use. Students gain more precision in their academic language development as they explore English grammatical structures and develop an appreciation of the work sociolinguists do through conversational analysis. As part of the University of the Pacific's general education program (1-A), this is a library intensive course. This means that students do library research, using online and other sources to meet some of the course requirements.