Language, Life and Society

Catalog description

In this course, we survey essential topics in the study of language with a view toward providing an overview of the approaches, methods, and goals of linguistics. We examine fundamental questions like what are the origins of human language? How does language work? How do human languages differ and how are they alike? How do children learn languages? Why does language change? What is the link between language and culture? Why do people have such strong opinions about others' language use? What is the impact of language loss in human society? We will address these questions and others through readings, problems and discussion. The goal of this course is to provide evidence and analytical methods by which students can critically evaluate their own and other people's views of language. The course also focuses on helping students gain proficiency in the general skill of how to use data (in this case, qualitative language data), to make a well-supported scientific argument.