INQ-260LI | Language and Social Identities

Full Title: Language and Social Identities

Topic Description:

Language is usually seen as a complex tool that human beings use for communication. However, we fail to perceive that language also has a crucial role in the construction of communities. What role does language have in the creation and shaping of social identities in human groups? Sociolinguist research has long shown that certain language features, namely patterns of pronunciation or the use of determined grammatical choices, signal membership to a social group and express our social persona. This course aims to explore in what ways language serves to construct and preserve social identities within a given group. Students will be able to recognize language features of English and other languages that have an active role in this process, and to quantify and measure the relation between linguistic items and societal issues. This course provides training in social science methods of research and scientific reasoning.

Counts as Global? No

Topic Approved: November 2014