Introduction to Sociolinguistics

This class is an introduction to sociolinguistics: the subfield of linguistics that is concerned with how society interacts with language. We all have experience with language in social context, and the data we need to study it more carefully is all around us. You'll learn about how our social contexts and identities shape how we use language, which in turn influences how others perceive us. You'll also learn about how social influences on language can contribute to language change over time. This is an active learning course, so you will engage in the same kinds of activities that sociolinguists do every day: reading papers, discussing case studies, collecting and analyzing data, and writing reports about what you have learned. And just like a working sociolinguist, you will do many of these activities collaboratively with others. Topics we will cover include regional accents, language attitudes, race, gender, style-shifting, code-switching, different kinds of language change, and techniques for the quantitative analysis of sociolinguistic variation.