First-Year Seminar in Applied Linguistics: Language as Social Practice

Catalog description

This course introduces the idea of understanding language use as social practice. This means studying how language serves to represent and to constrain speakers in various social and cultural contexts. The activity of using language will be viewed through the lens of several research domains in the field of Applied Linguistics, a discipline that studies language in the way that real speakers and writers actually use it. The class will present readings taken from fields as varied as sociolinguistics (language as social performance); second language acquisition research (language as cognition, language as participation); language and identity; pragmatics (speech, act theory; conversational analysis); and language and power (language an power (language policy; gender and language). Whether being studied as a formal school subject or learned at a mother's knee, language is in extricabley bound up with who we are and who we become. Theoretical terminology, research-based findings, and innovative ideas about what language 'really' is will be introduced and explored through accessible and engaging readings and activities. Students will learn to look at language use in social contexts from multiple perspectives, seeing how it both reflects, and shapes, identity in context (while at the same time allowing speakers to modify and shape those very contexts). Given that this is a first-year class for first-semester students, emphasis will be placed on how the understanding these basic ideas of Applied Linguistics can help us to pursue a satisfying and enriched sense of self, whether as a speaker of a specific language, or as a member of multiple discourse communities. Students will conduct an interview project to better understand the issues faced by language learners in the local community. International students are particularly invited to join this course.