LING 2221 - Language and Society

(CA-AS)

Spring. 4 credits.

A. Cohn.

We will explore how language and society affect each other. How do class, age, ethnicity, gender, and geography affect the way people speak? Why are some ways of speaking considered prestigious and others stigmatized? How does increased use of online communication and social media affect how we communicate? How are power relations captured in language? How does national policy-e.g., “English-only” policies-affect both politics and language use? What are the linguistic issues behind the Ebonics debate? In this course we consider these questions both in the context of the United States and other parts of the world.