Instructor: Prof. Alicia Beckford Wassink	Classroom: EEB 003
Email: wassink@u.washington.edu	Meeting time: M T W Th F 9:10-10:40am
Office: PDL A217
Office Hours: TTh 11:15-12:15 and by appointment (with sufficient notice)
Course discussion list: ling432a_su10@u.washington.edu	Review Terms: https://catalysttools.washington.edu/workspace/file/download/6755be60e2b2949cae8697f1ea9d1b2736958a1e9b0edd524c5ad9aff53a57a2
Course website: http://faculty.washington.edu/wassink	Catalyst Site: https://catalysttools.washington.edu/workspace/wassink/14663/
Course prerequisites: LING 200, LING 400, or equivalent. Recommended: LING 450.	Last rev. 8/9/10

Course Description:

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. Other topics covered will be language and style and larger scale social, educational, and political issues associated with the process of language standardization.

Goals:

• To investigate the relationship between social structure and language use/attitudes
• To gain familiarity with the terminology, methods, and literature of sociolinguistics
• To recognize that variation is a natural part of language and that linguistic variation is present at all levels of the grammar: to recognize and isolate linguistic variables in normal, everyday speech
• To develop skills for critiquing both sociolinguistic literature and common language attitudes

Policies and Expectations:

You are expected to do all readings before class in order to facilitate discussion and give you time to ask any questions you may have. You are also expected to check your email in order to keep up with any announcements or reminders that I may send through the course email discussion list. Please bring your notes and any other materials you may need with you to class. Cell phones and laptops should remain off during class (see Fried 2008 in Computers and Education). If for some reason you must show up to class late, please be as quiet as possible out of respect for your fellow students. If you are absent, it is up to you to contact another student to find out what you have missed.

Special Needs:

To request academic accommodations due to a disability, please contact Disabled Student Services, 448 Schmitz, 543-8924. If you have a letter from DDS indicating that you have a disability which requires special academic accommodations, please present the letter to me as soon as possible so we can discuss what accommodations you might need.

Course Requirements:

1. Daily Readings

• All required readings for this course are available through the University of Washington’s electronic reserves by clicking ‘Course Reserves’ from the library website (http://www.lib.washington.edu/) and then searching by course number (LING 432) or instructor (Wassink). You will need to be logged in with your UW Net ID to access the online reserves.

2. Participation – 10%

• Participation will be assessed based on active discussion of the class readings and occasional credit/no credit questions or activities completed during class.

3. Homework – 30%

• Weekly assignments will include reading responses and a mini data collection project. All assignments must be *typed,* 3-5 pages double-spaced, and turned in on the day that they are due to receive credit. Assignments must be handed in on paper unless you have made special arrangements with me to submit an assignment by email. If I have any reason to believe that your work is not your own, you will receive a zero on the assignment. (Note: Copying from uncredited online sources like Wikipedia is still plagiarism!)

4. Article Presentation – 20%

• Students will be responsible for leading (in groups of 3-4) discussion of one article from the syllabus. Presentations will take upto 30 minutes (no more!). Each group will receive some guidance from the instructor prior to their presentation on the content of the presentation. All members of the group are expected to participate equally in project preparation and presentation. Each group should prepare a handout, a PowerPoint presentation, or overhead slides for presenting the article, with no more than 30 slides total.

5. Sociolinguist Trading Card Project – 15%

• Students, in pairs or small groups, will choose a sociolinguist from the provided list, learn about that individual’s research and relevance to sociolinguistics, and create a sociolinguist trading card based on what they have learned. Students will then have 10-15 minutes to present this information to the class. If you choose an author whose work is listed on the syllabus, your trading card will typically be presented on the day that we cover that author’s article. (Further instructions will be provided in another handout.)

6. Quizzes – 25%

• There will be three in-class quizzes on material covered in readings and class.

The following UW grading scale will be used:

Percent = Grade

≥ 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 = failing

Note: It is university policy that I cannot discuss your grades over email. If you would like to talk about your grades, you are welcome to come to my office hours or see me after class.

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 person’s work as your own and will not be tolerated. It is your responsibility to read and understand the University’s expectations in this regard (which you can find 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.

Useful Resources for Sociolinguists:

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

Reading Schedule

Readings are to be done by the date listed (so they may be discussed in class). [#] indicates the number of pages of required reading for a given day.

Week	Day	Topic	Readings	Quizzes/Assignments/ Projects
1	Th 7-22	Introduction and orientation, aims and scope. Trading Cards Project explained	Chambers 1-11 [11]	Handouts: - inductive vs. deductive reasoning - Trading cards
	F 7-23	Sociolinguistics and adjacent fields; language as emblematic	Chambers 11-26, Coulmas 2001 [33]
2	M 7-26	Methods and goals; the 'linguistic variable'; variation and linguistic theory What is theory, anyway?	Chambers 26-38, Labov (1972c) ("Study of language in its social context," pgs. 283-298) [27]
	T 7-27	Speaker variable I: social class	Chambers 39-59 [20]
	W 7-28		Labov (1972b) ("Social stratification of (r)") [27]	TC pres: Labov, Article Presentation: Labov
	Th 7-29	Speaker variable II: social network	Chambers 74-115 [41]	7-29: Homework 1 Due
	F 7-30		Labov (1972a) ("Linguistic consequences…" pgs. 255-267) [12]	7-30: Quiz 1
3	M 8-2		Milroy & Milroy (1978) [18]	Article Presentation: Milroy & Milroy
	T 8-3	Speaker variable III: gender, interactions between independent variables	Cheshire (2004) [18]	TC pres: Milroy
	W 8-4		Eckert (1998) [11]	8-4: Homework 2 Due, TC pres: Eckert
	Th 8-5		Gal (1978) [15]	Article Presentation: Gal
	F 8-6	Speaker variable IV: age	Llamas (2007), Roberts (2004) [22]	TC pres: Sankoff
4	M 8-9	Speaker variable V: geographic mobility	Chambers 59-74, Tuten (2007) [21]	TC pres: Trudgill
	T 8-10		Nichols (1998) [20]; *Bortoni deleted*	Article Presentation: Nichols
	W 8-11	Style and register: terms of address	Fasold (1993) (pgs. 1-30) [30]	8-11: Quiz 2
	Th 8-12	Style and register: individual variation, Accommodation theory	Bell (2007), Bell (1984) [16]	TC pres: Coupland, Bell
	F 8-13	Dialectal variation and language ideology: prescriptivism and language policy; linguistic prestige; 'Standard' and 'Non-standard' varieties	Milroy (2007), Bello (1847) [15]
5	M 8-16	North America's regional, ethnic, and social dialects	Wolfram & Schilling-Estes (1998) [31]	8-16: Homework 3 Due
	T 8-17	Ethnicity: The case of African American English (AAE)	Wolfram (1998a) (“Language Ideology and Dialect”), Smitherman (1998) [24]
	W 8-18	Ethnicity: Structure and origins of AAE	Rickford & Rickford (2000) [32]	8-18: Quiz 3
	Th 8-19	Ethnicity: Housing discrimination	Purnell, Idsardi, and Baugh (1999) [20]	Article Presentation: Purnell, et al.
	F 8-20	Loose ends, conclusions, directions for the future, course evaluations	Wolfram (1998b) ("Scrutinizing Linguistic Gratuity") [8]	8-20: Homework 4 Due

Readings:

Bell, A. (1984) Language style as audience design. In Coupland, N. and A. Jaworski (1997, eds.) Sociolinguistics: a reader and coursebook, pp. 240-50. New York: St. Martin’s Press Inc.

Bell, A. (2007) Style and the linguistic repertoire. In Llamas, Carmen, Mullany, Louise, and Stockwell, Peter (eds.) The Routledge Companion to Sociolinguistics, pp. 95- 100. London: Routledge.

Bello, A. (1847) Prologue: Grammar of the Spanish Language. In López-Morillas, F.M. (1997, ed.) Selected writings of Andrés Bello. London: Oxford University Press.

Bortoni, S.M. (1991) Dialect contact in Brasilia. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 89. Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 47-59.

Chambers, J.K. (2002) Sociolinguistic Theory. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

Cheshire, Jenny. (2004) Sex and Gender in Variationist Research. In Chambers, J.K., Trudgill, Peter, and Schilling-Estes, Natalie (eds.) The Handbook of Language Variation and Change, pp. 423-443. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

Coulmas, Florian. (2001) Sociolinguistics. In Aronoff, Mark and Rees-Miller, Janie (eds.) The Handbook of Linguistics, pp. 563-581. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

Eckert, P. (1998) Gender and sociolinguistic variation. In Coates, J. (ed.) Language and Gender: a reader. Oxford, UK: Blackwell, pp. 64-75.

Fasold, R. (1993) Address Forms, The sociolinguistics of language, ch 1. Oxford, UK: Blackwell, pp. 1-38.

Gal, S. (1978) Peasant men can’t get wives: language change and sex roles in a bilingual community, Language in Society, 7(1), pp. 1-16.

Labov, W. (1972a) The linguistic consequences of being a lame, Language in the inner city, ch. 7. Philadelphia: U Pennsylvania, pp. 255-292.

Labov, W. (1972b) The social stratification of (r) in New York City department stores.

In Sociolinguistic Patterns. Philadelphia: U Pennsylvania, pp. 43-69.

Labov, W. (1972c) The study of language in its social context. In Giglioli, P.P. (ed.) Language and Social Context. Harmondsworth: Penguin, pp. 283-98.

Llamas, Carmen. (2007) Age. In Llamas, Carmen, Mullany, Louise, and Stockwell, Peter (eds.) The Routledge Companion to Sociolinguistics, pp. 69-76. London: Routledge.

Milroy, James. (2007) The ideology of the standard language. In Llamas, Carmen, Mullany, Louise, and Stockwell, Peter (eds.) The Routledge Companion to Sociolinguistics, pp. 133-139. London: Routledge.

Milroy, J. and Milroy, L. (1978) Belfast: Change and variation in an urban vernacular. In P. Trudgill, (ed.), Sociolinguistic patterns in British English. London: Edward Arnold, pp. 19-36.

Nichols, P.C. (1998) Black women in the rural south: conservative and innovative. In Coates, J. (ed.) Language and Gender: a reader. Oxford, UK: Blackwell, pp. 55-63.

Purnell, T., Idsardi, W., and Baugh, J. (1999) Perceptual and phonetic experiments on American English dialect identification, Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 18(1), pp. 10-30.

Rickford, J.R. and Rickford, R.J. (2000) History. Spoken Soul: the story of Black English. New York: John Wiley and Sons, pp. 129-160.

Roberts, Julie. (2004) Child language variation. In Chambers, J.K., Trudgill, Peter, and Schilling-Estes, Natalie (eds.) The Handbook of Language Variation and Change, pp. 333-348. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

Smitherman, G. (1998) Ebonics, King, and Oakland: Some folk don’t believe fat meat is greasy, Journal of English Linguistics, 26(2), pp. 97-107.

Tuten, Donald N. (2007) Koineization. In Llamas, Carmen, Mullany, Louise, and Stockwell, Peter (eds.) The Routledge Companion to Sociolinguistics, pp. 185- 191. London: Routledge.

Wolfram, W. (1998a) Language ideology and dialect: understanding the Ebonics controversy. Journal of English Linguistics, 26(2), pp. 108-121.

Wolfram, W. (1998b) Scrutinizing linguistic gratuity: issues from the field, Journal of Sociolinguistics, 2(2), pp. 271-279.

Wolfram, W., and Schilling-Estes, N. (1998) American English, ch. 4. Dialects in the US: past, present, and future. Oxford, UK: Blackwell, pp. 90-123.

For Trading Card presentations:

[Sankoff] Sankoff, Gillian & Blondeau, Helene (2007). “Language change across the lifespan: /r/ in Montreal French”, Language 83(3): 560-588

[Coupland] Shepard, Carolyn A., Giles, H. & LePoire, Beth (2001) Communication Accommodation Theory, ch. 1.2. In, The New Handbook of Language and Social Psychology (W. P. Robinson and H. Giles, eds.). Chichester: Wiley. 34-51.