teaching
courses taught at CCU
This course will center on the implications of the reality of language variation in the teaching of English specifically in the United States. Linguists know that variation is an inherent fact of language. This will then create multiple dialects of a language, which linguistics see as each being of equal validity. However, sociolinguistics teaches us that dialects are intimately connected to social factors like age, gender, and most importantly power. Therefore, some dialects of a language will be more valued than others based on the power maintained by the speakers of that dialect. Where these facts come to a head is in the educational system. So, the question of what and how to teach so-called Standardized American English becomes extremely important. This course then, will look at all the linguistic and socio-political implications of teaching composition at the college level.
Some questions we will seek to answer: How do we teach from an informed sociolinguistic perspective? Should we teach Standardized English or should we teach another variety of English, or some combination of the two? How do we maintain our sociolinguistic views of language diversity while still teaching Standardized English? How do we help speakers of a non-standard dialect value their own language in the classroom?
This course is an introduction to Historical Linguistics, with a specific focus on the development of the English Language from Indo-European up to Present Day English. This course will provide you with the tools to do historical linguistic analysis in order to foster a deeper understanding of not only the History of the English language but also a knowledge of the methods that this history was uncovered.
By the end of the course, you should have an understanding of the following: how and why languages change, how to analyze and represent sounds graphically, how writing systems differ from each other and from speech, how and why languages are grouped together into families, and what specific linguistic differences exist between the different historical stages of English.
This course is an introduction to linguistics, but it goes beyond a mere overview of the field to Linguistics but rather seeks to provide students with the tools to do linguistic analysis at the levels of phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics while at the same time emphasizing the influence of social factors on variation and change in each of these areas.
This class is developed around a series of problem sets and exams which ask students to apply classroom concepts to real world data.
In this course, we examine the fundamental linguistic characteristics of the language(s) spoken in the American South. We will explore the characteristics of Southern English from a variety of levels of abstraction, including sounds, words, grammatical features, sentence structure, and discourse style. We will study these characteristics from a scientific perspective being guided by contemporary Sociolinguistic theory. We will seek answers to questions regarding the fundamental features of Southern English as well as its origins, its shared features and socio-cultural history with other varieties (e.g., African American English and Cajun English), and attitudes towards and evaluations of Southern English.
This class is developed around the collection of sociolinguistic data through the semester on several different canonical features of Southern English. Students will learn to analyze the data and present their findings through a classroom presentation and a final paper.
In this course we investigate one of the most interesting questions in Linguistics, how we subconsciously get from sounds and words to meaning. We will investigate how sentences are structured and attempt to model the rules that must be in place to produce all the possible grammatical sentences of English. We will tackle several interesting linguistic phenomena including: direct and indirect objects, embedded and relative clauses, negation, yes/no and WH questions, C–command, EPP, Case, theta roles, and questions.
This class is developed around a series of problem sets and exams which ask students to apply classroom concepts to real world data (both in English and other languages).
This course examines one of the best known and most easily recognized varieties of English spoken in America, African American English (AAE), from a linguistic perspective based on over 60 years of sociolinguistic research. We will begin by exploring the major competing theories for the historical development of AAE, and from these historical groundings, we’ll look at connections between AAE and the creole variety Gullah as well as the sociolinguistic connections, overlaps, and differences in the development of Southern White English. Students will learn to analyze specific lexical, phonological, and syntactic features of AAE and how these features vary by gender, region, age, and class. Near the end of the semester, we’ll discussions of the educational issues and linguistic discrimination against AAE speakers in the classroom.
This class is developed around the collection of sociolinguistic data through the semester on several different canonical features of African American English. Students will learn to analyze the data and present their findings through a classroom presentation and a final paper.
In this course, we study the differences in the varieties of North American English from a scientific perspective being guided by contemporary sociolinguistic theory. We investigate regional, social, ethnic, gender, and style-related language variation. We explore issues related to the evaluation of individual dialects regarding the perceptions and attitudes of speakers and hearers of these varieties. We also address issues related to the so-called Standard English ideology and even seek to uncover linguistic profiling and discrimination.
The course will be discussion based and will involve a good deal of classroom participation and presentation. Students will be asked to complete original sociolinguistic research by collecting data on actual real-world language variation and presenting their findings in both oral and written form.
In this course, we will look at representations of and ideas about what it means to be Southern with a particular focus on how language is involved in these representations. We will look at representations of the South and Southern English in a variety of modes: short stories, novels, music, film, and pop culture. We will investigate how the representation of Southern English helps develop the trope of Southerness in a variety of ways and how these representations situates the South in a socio-cultural dialogue involving family, place, religion, race, and coping with the past and present of the South. We will draw on traditional literary criticism as well as insights from the various sub-disciplines of linguistics including sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, and literary linguistics.
This class seeks to create a collaborative, critical inquiry of what is the South and how language is used strategically in this representation. Learning is assessed by weekly reading quizzes, group and individual class presentations, and a paper presenting your own analysis of a representation of the South in some aspect of Culture.
courses taught at MSU
The objectives of the course are to provide you with an introduction to the nature and structure of human language, as well as to introduce you to some basic methods of its scientific study. The course will be framed in terms of 4 guiding questions: What is the nature of the cognitive system which we identify with knowing a language? How do we acquire such a system? How is this system used in the production and comprehension of speech? How is this system represented in the brain?
To begin answering these questions we will look at the various components which form the structure of any language. The fields which linguists investigate in this regard are phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics. In addition, certain related areas of linguistics such as sociolinguistics, historical linguistics, psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics serve to expand our insight into the complexities that comprise “language.” By the end of the course you should have a solid overview of the linguistic system and how fantastically complicated and interesting it is, and you should have an understanding of what it is to do linguistics, since, in this course, you will learn linguistics by doing it, and not just hearing about it.
This course is a more specialized class in language variation focusing on the important effects of gender on language variation and change. I use the Coates and Pichler (2011) reader and center the class on discussion of actual articles on language and gender. We begin with the arguments for the different approaches to the study of language and gender (the biological, dominance, and difference approaches), and then move on to linguistic constructions of masculinity and femininity, and we end the course looking at the effect of gender on language change and discuss Labov's Gender Principles (1990). This course is cross listed in Women's Studies.
This class is heavily dependent on the course readings and active discussion. Along with tests and quizzes which ask students to apply concepts and connect studies to methods and findings, the students also conduct primary research looking at the gendered usage of compliments on their campus.