The Graduate Certificate Program in Culture, Language, and Social Practice (CLASP) is an interdisciplinary course of study designed to complement the M.A. or Ph.D. curriculum required by a student’s home department. The Certificate Program provides graduate students with the opportunity to pursue the study of language and society from an interdisciplinary perspective, acquiring a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches to the sociocultural analysis of language. The traditions of socially oriented language research addressed in CLASP-approved courses reflect the diversity of its 23 affiliated faculty members. These traditions include the sociology of language, linguistic anthropology, narrative studies, philosophy of language, symbolic interactionism, rhetoric, sociolinguistics, pragmatics, language and cognition, conversation analysis, ethnography of speaking, intercultural communication, second language acquisition, language and literacy, bilingualism and code-switching, and varied forms of socially oriented discourse analysis.

Students accepted into the CLASP Certificate Program will be advised throughout their course of study by a CLASP faculty member, preferably from the student’s home department. These faculty members, who along with the program director constitute the curriculum committee, are responsible for advising students and monitoring their progress.

Students can earn the Certificate by successfully completing four courses approved by the CLASP curriculum committee: three courses on the subject of language and society, and one course on either social theory or ethnographic methods that is determined to be relevant to the student’s research goals.

Graduate students at the University of Colorado who wish to apply to participate in the CLASP Graduate Certificate Program must fill out the CLASP Graduate Certificate Application and submit it to the program director (Kira Hall, Department of Linguistics, Campus Box 295). More information on the application form and program requirements can be found on the certificate application and certificate requirements pages, respectively.