Course description:
Discourse Analysis points to a family of approaches to inquiry and a substantive area of study. In communication, it's often referred to as language and social interaction, "LSI." The class attends to both meanings, albeit tilting toward discourse analysis as a method for the study of interaction. The seminar has two purposes, with each reflected in class activities and assignments. A first purpose is to acquaint you with three important kinds of discourse analysis: conversation analysis, critical discourse approaches, and rhetorically-influenced approaches
(discursive psychology, action-implicative discourse analysis). For each approach
you will learn what are its assumptions and distinctive features, usual kinds of
analytic moves, and the important questions for investigation. The second purpose of the seminar is to enable you to do a discourse analysis yourself: To take instances of talk or text and arrive at an interesting, persuasive scholarly analysis. To accomplish this second purpose, you will be practicing the technical and analytic skills that comprise discourse analysis (transcribing, listening for particulars, selecting excerpts, documenting inferences, linking to scholarly controversies, building insightful central claims). The first part of the class will involve
assignments with a common text. Then, for the remainder of the semester, students will work with a slice of institutional or interpersonal interaction that they have selected to develop a full-blown research paper.
LING 7800: Sociolinguistic Methods and Research Development
Professor: Kira Hall
Time: Tuesdays, 12:30 - 3:15
Place: Hellems 291
Course description:
This seminar is designed to assist graduate students in the collection, interpretation, and analysis of sociolinguistic data, with special emphasis on ethnographic methods. The term sociolinguistics is here broadly defined to include diverse approaches to the study of language, culture, and society, ranging from linguistic anthropology to varied forms of socially oriented discourse analysis. Participants will decide on a socially meaningful topic to pursue during the first two weeks of the semester, after which they will collect, transcribe, and analyze supporting linguistic data, such as ethnographic interviews, audio-visual recordings of face-to-face or on-line interaction, political speeches, or other kinds of performance data. Each student will develop an annotated bibliography of theoretical and ethnographic scholarship tailored to the topic at hand, and will incorporate this bibliography into the final paper. The ultimate goal of the seminar, to be facilitated by instructor feedback, peer review, and selected readings on sociolinguistic and ethnographic methodology, is for students to develop an article suitable for publication in a leading journal. This seminar is designed for M.A. or Ph.D. students in any discipline who have had previous coursework in the areas of sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, conversation analysis, or socially oriented discourse analysis. Enrollment will be limited to 12 participants, so students interested in taking the seminar should contact the instructor before enrolling.
Required books:
* Johnstone, Barbara (2000). Qualitative Methods in Sociolinguistics. New York: Oxford.
* Briggs, Charles (1986). Learning How to Ask: A Sociolinguistic Appraisal of the Role of the Interview in Social Science Research. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
* Course Reader, available through pdf.
LING 7800: Language and Performance
Professor: Andrew Cowell
Time: Wednesdays, TBA
Place: TBA
Course description:
This course will look at the special case of language in performance – that is
to say, special, marked genres of language use. These will include narrative,
musical texts, joking, speeches, prayers, and didactic performances, oral
poetry, discourses of salesmanship, and potentially other genres such as
sermons and so forth. We will consider how these are all a special kind of
“performance” and analyze definitions of performances of this sort in relation
to broader theories of linguistic performativity. Among the questions we will
consider are exactly how different these linguistic practices and behaviors are
from less marked types of linguistic behavior and to what extent the term
“performance” as elaborated by Bauman, Briggs, Hymes, Tedlock, Turner, Sherzer,
and others is analytically useful; how such performances are marked in space and
time through language; the ways in which such performances are involved in
broader socio-linguistic phenomena such as language socialization, identity
formation, and the development of cognitive models; and the ways in which
phenomena such as literacy or uses of other specific language technologies, or
code-switching, use of pidgins and jargons, and the like, can also be
considered as performances in the context of certain societies.
The course will be primarily anthropological in approach: we will look at a
number of cultures and languages from around the globe, with some attention to
the contemporary US as well.
COMM 5210: Readings in Communication Theory
Professor: Robert Craig
Time: Thursdays 3:30-6:00
Place: Hellems 77
Course description:
Critical overview of leading theoretical traditions in communication studies. Attention to metatheoretical issues including epistemological foundations, the structure of communication theory as a field, and reflexivity between communication theory and cultural practice. Recommended for graduate students in Communication and related disciplines.
SPAN 5420: History of the Spanish Language
Professor: Vincent Barletta
Time: Wednesdays 7:00PM-9:30
Place: McKenna 103
Course description:
This seminar traces the development of the Spanish language from Latin
(inter alia) to the present focusing upon internal linguistic changes
as well as socio-cultural and historical factors that inform such
change. Our discussions and conclusions will be informed by a hybrid
theoretical framework that brings together theories of
grammaticalization, or the processes by which lexical items become
grammatical ones, and recent work on language ideologies and language
change/standardization. Readings include English-language studies on
the history of the Spanish language, grammaticalization, language
ideologies, interaction, as well as selected medieval and early modern
texts in Ibero-Romance.
