121 - 130 of 183 results for: LINGUIST

Methods of modeling the patterned variation of language in society. Emphasis is on variation, its relation to social structure and practice, and its role in linguistic change. Intersection between quantitative and qualitative analysis, combining insights of sociology and linguistic anthropology with quantitative linguistic data. Prerequisite: graduate standing in Linguistics or consent of instructor.

Strengths and weaknesses of the principal methods of data collection in sociolinguistics.

Introduction to pidgins and creoles, organized around the main stages in the pidgin-creole life cycle: pidginization, creolization, and decreolization. Focus is on transformations in the English language as it was transported from Britain to Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and the Pacific. Resultant pidginized and creolized varieties such as Nigerian Pidgin English, Chinese Pidgin English, New Guinea Tok Pisin, Suriname Sranan, and the creole continua of Guyana, Jamaica, and Hawaii. Also French, Dutch, Portugese, Chinook, Motu, and Sango.

Language, as a cultural resource for shaping our identities, is central to the concepts of race and ethnicity. This seminar explores the linguistic construction of race and ethnicity across a wide variety of contexts and communities. We begin with an examination of the concepts of race and ethnicity and what it means to be "doing race," both as scholarship and as part of our everyday lives. Throughout the course, we will take a comparative perspective and highlight how different racial/ethnic formations (Asian, Black, Latino, Native American, White, etc.) participate in similar, yet different, ways of drawing racial and ethnic distinctions. The seminar will draw heavily on scholarship in (linguistic) anthropology, sociolinguistics and education. We will explore how we talk and don't talk about race, how we both position ourselves and are positioned by others, how the way we talk can have real consequences on the trajectory of our lives, and how, despite this, we all participate in maintaining racial and ethnic hierarchies and inequality more generally, particularly in schools.

This methods seminar focuses on developing ethnographic strategies for representing race, ethnicity, and language in writing without reproducing the stereotypes surrounding these categories and practices. In addition to reading various ethnographies, students conduct their own ethnographic research to test out the authors' contrasting approaches to data collection, analysis, and representation. The goal is for students to develop a rich ethnographic toolkit that will allow them to effectively represent the (re)production and (trans)formation of racial, ethnic, and linguistic phenomena.

This seminar organizes and analyzes data gathered by the Voices of California project. This year, we will be working with the data from Salinas. May be repeated for credit.

This course discusses some of the major community studies in sociolinguistics (e.g. Labov in NYC, Wolfram in Detroit, Trudgill in Norwich, Milroy in Belfast, and a selection of others up to the present) and the work of other classic sociolinguistic figures (e.g. Romaine, Hymes) who contributed in other ways. Our goal is to reach a deep understanding and critique of their methods, findings and ideas, to improve our own research and our responses to new developments in the field.

Seminar style course exploring the literature on sociolinguistic variation in morphology and syntax from the 1960s to the present, and its implication for (socio)linguistic theory, especially in relation to (and in contrast with) socio-phonetics.

Figures of personhood, personas, character types, and stereotypes in the study of linguistic variation. What are the significant differences among these types? Are these social types merely the vehicles through which social meanings travel or do they constitute the meanings themselves?