LANGUAGE AND POWER

Catalog description

This course is concerned with gender, ethnic and social class differences in language use that have been observed in the United States and elsewhere. Every society has a language style that is considered prestigious or standard, as opposed to the various low-prestige or non-standard varieties of speech. Students will read studies describing high and low prestige linguistic styles in a range of communities. They will examine the ways in which such differences influence the speaker's access to social power and to the resources available within the larger society as well as in their local speech communities.