SociolinguisticsModule Details

Background and Rationale

The main objectives of the course are to:
• Provide students with an understanding of the study of language as a social phenomenon;
• Draw examples from international contexts of language use to examine the interrelationship of language and social context, how language is actually used, people’s language attitudes, and how language use and language attitudes are often opposed;
• Consider factors such as age, gender, social class, race, ethnicity and style and the relationship of these factors to linguistic differentiation and the construction and display of identities.

Learning Outcomes

After completion of the course students are expected to be able to:
1. Show an understanding of sociolinguistic concepts;
2. Have developed an awareness of the diverse areas of sociolinguistic inquiry such as dialectology, the social psychology of language, language variation, ethnography of communication, interactional sociolinguistics and gender studies;
3. Show an awareness of the interrelationship between sociolinguistic research and theories/ methods drawn from various fields, such as linguistics, sociology, anthropology, folklore and education;
4. Critically evaluate literature in the sociolinguistic field;