Description
Linguists have been accused of being professional eavesdroppers, not on what people say, but on how they say it. People are immersed in a constant ebb and flow of voices, accents, dialects, and styles, each carrying aspects of the speaker’s identity, beliefs, and desires. How people express their meanings can be either a bridge that creates connections or a chasm that separates and isolates. Following is a list of a few key topics covered in Language in Society.
Multilingualism: Most of the world is bilingual or multilingual, yet Americans often consider multilingualism to be exotic. In an age of mass immigration and international trade and travel, attempts to idealize and preserve monolingualism are at best a fiction and at worst a danger. Students in Language in Society will read and discuss the benefits of life in a multilingual world.
Status: Discussion of status swings between the view that linguistic style is adaptable allowing speakers to compete and rise through the class layers and the awareness that many opportunities are directly linked to origins. A regular emphasis in Language in Society will be increasing awareness of the subtle preferences we hold toward small distinctions of style and the harmful consequences these preferences can hold for speakers of lower-status dialects.
Ethnicity: Social uses of language are often the most noticeable markers of ethnicity. Too often differences have been attributed to a language deficit, leading in practice to oppression, overtly under apartheid in South Africa and more subtly with the abiding racialization of American society. A goal of Language in Society will be to show the logic and complexities of non-standard dialects, with a goal of challenging the deficit approach.
Gender: Gender often forms the most salient feature of sociolinguistic variation. Gender differences, both in language and generally in society, are not random or neutral. Language in Society is designed to help raise to conscious awareness the many ways our language usage is both an expressive resource and a potential restraint.
Inequality: Language is implicated in the shape and order of society. It is not only a truth-teller; language can also be a deceiver. As Basil Bernstein discussed long ago, social inequalities produce linguistic inequalities, which then contribute to long-term, generational inequities. Students in Language in Society will be challenged to think about the many ways their preferences for certain ways of communicating may create unjust barriers to the advancement of speakers of minority dialects.
Details
- instructor: Dr. Clay Butler
- Clay_Butler@baylor.edu
- Senior Lecture in Linguistics (since 2001)
- Faculty-in-Residence @ Martin Hall (since 2015)
- Director of Baylor in Peru (2017-2020)
- Director of Baylor in New Zealand (since 2021)
- degree: Contemporary Social Issues distribution list
- terms:
- in-person: every fall and spring semester
- online-asynchronous: every summer (check the Schedule of Classes for the specific summer term)
- recent Syllabus and Schedule of readings
- textbook: Van Herk, Gerard (2018) What is Sociolinguistics? (2nd ed) John Wiley & Sons Publishers.
- assignments:
- Quizzes over the assigned readings, on Canvas (outside of class)
- Exams over course lectures (in-class)
- Present over an assigned article… create a PowerPoint summarizing insights and give a brief presentation to the class
Who should take LING 1305?
Anyone interested in language or wanting to communicate more effectively would benefit from LING 1305. Students in the following majors or professional tracks should consider taking the course.
Linguistics
This course is the only freshmen-level linguistics course and a great way to get started thinking about language issues.
Languages
Whether you’re studying Spanish, French, Russian, ASL, or any other language, this course will help you think clearly about all the language issues beyond grammar and pronunciation.
Interpreting
The process of translating between languages requires both a grammatical knowledge of the language as well as an awareness of the social factors in play.
Business
This course will help business professionals communicate better with an increasingly diverse workforce and international markets.
Medical
Health professionals are increasingly aware that effective communication is critical to connect with patients, gain their trust, and increase compliance with health management plans.
Legal
While language is the currency of the law, knowing grammatical usage is only half the economy. Language gains meaning in social contexts, and lawyers are often facing contexts that are new and puzzling. This course prepares students to think about the numerous social factors that guide meanings.
Communications
Communicating with our own groups is generally easy. Finding ways to communicate effectively with strangers is much, much harder, requiring us to consider other worlds and other ways to talk about those worlds.