LING432A/ANTH432A

Sociolinguistics I                                                                        

 

Instructor:  Professor Alicia Beckford Wassink                                              

Location:  SAV 151

Office:  Padelford A217                                                                                      

Class Time:  M,W 12:30-2:20pm

Office Hours: M, W 3:45-4:30pm and by appt.

 

Office Phone:  616-9589

Quick Links:

Dept. Phone:  543-2046 (Dept. of Linguistics Office)

Term project guidelines

InstructorÕs Email:  wassink@u.washington.edu

 

 

Course overview:

               Students will be introduced to methods of studying the relationships between language variation and social structure and to the major findings of sociolinguists who have examined these relationships. The course will focus largely (but not exclusively) on quantitative methods developed in the tradition of variationist sociolinguistics, pioneered by William Labov,  that are designed to reveal the way language change is rooted in synchronic variation. The class will study reports of research which focus variously on everyday social interaction, on larger scale patterns of social dialect variation, and on patterns of code choice in bidialectal and bilingual communities. Relationships between language and social class, language and gender, and language and ethnicity will be discussed. Others topics covered will be language and style and larger scale social, educational, and political issues associated with the process of language standardization.

 

               Course prerequisites: LING200, LING400 (for linguistics majors) or equivalent (ENGL370).  Recommended prerequisite: LING450

 

Course policies:

¯       Special needs

To request academic accommodations due to a disability, please contact Disabled Student Services, 448 Schmitz, 543-8924 (V), 543-8925 (TTY), uwdss@u.washington.edu. If you have a letter from DSS indicating that you have a disability which requires special academic accommodations, please present the letter to your instructor as soon as possible so the proper accommodations can be discussed and met.

¯       Academic integrity

Students are expected to maintain the highest standards of academic ethics, honesty and integrity. Academic misconduct includes (but is not limited to) plagiarism, harassment, cheating, or representing another personÕs work as your own and will not be tolerated. It is your responsibility to read and understand the UniversityÕs expectations in this regard (which you can find in the back of your UW Student Planner or online at http://www.washington.edu/students/handbook/conduct.html). Any student found to be in violation of proper academic conduct will be dealt with in the strictest manner in accordance with University policy. 

 

Evaluation:

1.       25%--Presentation:  Students will be responsible for leading (in pairs or small groups) discussion of one topic from the syllabus below (topic is studentÕs choice).  Groups must meet with instructor prior to their presentation to discuss the content and format of the presentation.

2.       30%--Periodic Quizzes:  There will be three short in-class quizzes on material covered in readings and lecture.  Quizzes will be announced one week in advance.

3.       45%--Data Collection Project:  All students will carry out a small-scale piece of original sociolinguistic research in a local community with which they are familiar.  The design and results of this project will be presented in a paper (10-15 pages for undergrads, 15-20 for grads including transcriptions and write-up) due at the BEGINNING of the final examination period scheduled for this course: 8:30 AM, Thursday March 15, 2007 In SAV 151.  No extensions will be granted, so please don't ask!

4.       The following UW grading scale will be used (www.washington.edu/students/gencat/front/Grading_Sys.html):

  Percent  =  Grade

     ³ 95%    =      4.0              88    =     3.3              81    =     2.6               74    =     1.9                   67    =     1.2

94        =      3.9              87    =     3.2              80    =     2.5               73    =     1.8                   66    =     1.1

93        =      3.8              86    =     3.1              79    =     2.4               72    =     1.7                   65    =     1.0

92        =      3.7              85    =     3.0              78    =     2.3               71    =     1.6                   64    =     .9     

91        =      3.6              84    =     2.9              77    =     2.2               70    =     1.5                   63    =     .8          

90        =      3.5              83    =     2.8              76    =     2.1               69    =     1.4                   62    =     .7

89        =      3.4              82    =     2.7              75    =     2.0               68    =     1.3          (< .7 is a failing grade)

 

Required reading:

1.) Course text: Chambers, J.K.  (2002)   Sociolinguistic Theory.  Blackwell

2.) Required coursepack, available at Ave Copycenter, 4141 University Way NE (phone:  206-633-1837)

 

Necessary Equipment:

 One good quality cd or cassette recorder, preferably with external microphone, and some cassette tapes. Some equipment is available from the sociophonetics lab.

*No microcassette tapes, please (analog or digital audiotapes only).

 

For those who wish to read more:

There are several texts and edited volumes that can provide you with a basic introduction to sociolinguistics.  Here are a few notable ones:

               Coupland, N. and Adam Jaworski  (1997)  Sociolinguistics: a reader and coursebook. New York: St Martin's Press Inc.

Trudgill, P. and Cheshire, J. (1998) The sociolinguistics reader, vols. 1, 2: in particular multilingualism and variation. New York: Arnold

 

Following are some of the principal journals in the field of sociolinguistics.  Many of the required course readings come from the classic sociolinguistics literature, giving you the first (but not always the most current) word on a topic. Your attention will be drawn throughout the quarter to other important and recent readings on our course topics.  Many of these appear in articles published in the journals below. Consult these when researching your presentation topic, when choosing your term project, and when doing your research for that project:

               Journal of Sociolinguistics, Blackwell       

               Language in Society, Cambridge University Press

               Language Variation and Change, Cambridge University Press

               Journal of English Linguistics, Sage

               English World-Wide, John Benjamins

               International Journal of the Sociology of Language, Mouton de Gruyter

               Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, Multilingual Matters

 

SYLLABUS

( Ò*Ó indicates a reading for which you are responsible for an excerpted portion, and need not read the work in its entirety. Boldface indicates required readings.  Reading the others is strongly encouraged, particularly if you are a Linguistics major, but only required if you are presenting on that topic.  You will, in any case, be responsible for all material discussed in lecture; whether from required or optional readings.)

Week

Day

Topic

Readings

Come to class prepared to discussÉ

 

 

SociolinguisticsÉscope, methods and goals:

 

1

W 1/3

Introduction  and orientation. Aims and scope: a broad and a narrow conception of sociolinguistics

Students' interests, and how we might incorporate these.

2

M 1/8

Sociolinguistics and adjacent fields; language as emblematic

Chambers pp. 1-12; Hymes 1974; Fishman 1972

 

W 1/10

Methods and goals: The "linguistic variable"; Variation and linguistic theory

--choose presentation topics--

Chambers pp. 12-33; Labov  1972* ("Study of language in its social context")

3

M 1/15

**NO CLASSES – Martin Luther King, jr. Day observed**

 

 

 

Linguistic variation along key macrosocial categories

 

 

W 1/17

Speaker variables I:  social class and phonological variation

Chambers pp. 34-52

4

M 1/22

Social class, cont.

Labov 1972 ("Social Stratification of (r)

 

W 1/24

Speaker variables II: social network

 

Chambers  66-100; Milroy & Milroy 1978

5

M 1/29

Social network, cont.

supplemental OHs

Labov 1972 ('Linguistic consequences ....' )

 

W 1/31

Speaker variables III: Gender, and interactions between independent variables

Eckert, 1998; Chambers pp. 102-145

6

M 2/5

Gender, cont.

 

Eckert 1988; Gal 1997

 

W 2/7

Speaker variables IV: Age

Roberts 1997

7

M 2/12

Speaker variables V: Geographic mobility; dialect levelling

Chambers  52-65, Bortoni 1991; Nichols 1998

 

 

Style and Register:

 

 

W2/14

Terms of Address; Individual variation: style and register, hypercorrection

Fasold 1993*; Palakornkul 1975;  Bell 1997

8

M 2/19

**NO CLASSES – Presidents Day observed**

 

 

 

Dialectal variation and language ideology:

 

 

W 2/21

Prescriptivism  and language policy

Linguistic prestige, 'Standard' and 'Non-standard' varieties

Haugen 1997, Bello 1847

9

M 2/26

Ethnicity and language conflict

Fishman 1997

 

W 2/28

North America's regional, ethnic, and social dialects

Wolfram and Schilling-Estes, 1998

10

M 3/5

The case of African American English (AAE), aka Ebonics

Wolfram 1998; Smitherman 1998

 

W 3/7

The structure and origins of AAE

Rickford & Rickford 2000

11

Thurs 3/15

**FINAL PAPERS DUE **  8:30 AM In SAV 151