The following materials were prepared for a fully online, small-enrollment course on Language and Social Issues taught at the University of Arizona in the Spring semester of 2020. This course is focused on language and society within the United States and how to analyze the social use of language.
Note: Week numbering on the documents themselves may not agree with their labels here, but the links are correct!
Paper 1: History of a "Standard" Language or History of an Endangered Language
Paper 2: Language and Identity
Assignment Sheet 1: Background Research and Annotated Bibliography
Assignment Sheet 2: Final Write-up
Video Lessons:
Readings:
Lippi-Green (2012): Introduction
Discussion Prompt: Week 1
Video Lessons:
Readings:
Lippi-Green (2012): Chapter 1 - The Linguistic Facts of Life
Language Files 10.1-10.2 (12th Edition)
Assignments:
Discussion Prompt: Week 2
500-Words Assignment: Week 2
Video Lessons:
External Content:
External Content 1: Clip from "Do You Speak American" (PBS Documentary, 2005) about the Northern Cities Vowel Shift
Readings:
Language Files 10.3 (12th edition) - Factors Influencing Variation: Regional and Geographic Factors
Brinton and Arnovick (2011): pg. 466-473 - English in the United States
Wolfram & Schilling (2015): pg. 126-127 - Eliciting Regional Dialect Forms
(optional) Wolfram & Schilling (2015): Chapters 4-5
Assignments:
Discussion Prompt: Week 3
500-Words Assignment: Week 3
Video Lessons:
Readings:
Language Files 10.4 (12th ed.) - Factors Influencing Variation: Social Factors
Green (2002): Chapter 3 - Syntactic and Morphosyntactic Properties in AAE
Jones (2015): pg. 420-430 (section about mapping AAE regional dialects using Twitter data)
Assignments:
Discussion Prompt: Week 4
500-Word Assignment: Week 4
Video Lessons:
External Content:
External Content 2: What makes a word 'real'? (TED talk by Anne Curzan, 2014)
External Content 3: Why do people in old movies talk weird? (posted in 2014, by BrainStuff on HowStuffWorks) - Quick overview of the Transatlantic Accent
External Content 4: An English Accent, past, present, and future (Open University video on the history of Received Pronunciation, published in 1998)
External Content (optional): Asymmetric Intelligibility (2018, by NativLang)
Readings:
Lippi-Green (2012): Chapter 3 - The Myth of the Non-Accent
Lippi-Green (2012): Chapter 4 - The Standard Language Myth
Assignments:
Discussion Prompt: Week 5
500-Words Assignment: Week 5
Video Lessons:
Lesson 9: Linguistic Ideologies and Discrimination: Introducing Concepts (slides)
External Content:
External Content 5: Struggle for black and Latino mortgage applicants suggests modern-day redlining (PBS News Hour, 2018)
Readings:
Lippi-Green (2012): Chapter 5 - Language Subordination
Lippi-Green (2012): Case Study 2 - Linguistic Profiling and Fair Housing
Lippi-Green (2012): pg. 78-85 - The Educational System (part 1)
Lippi-Green (2012): Chapter 9 - Real People with a Real Language: the Workplace and the Judicial System (read one case study for discussion posts)
Assignments:
Discussion Prompt: Week 6
500-Words Assignment: Week 6
Video Lessons:
Lesson 10: Language Shift and Language Vitality (slides)
External Content:
External Content 6: Why Save a Language? (short film by Sally Thompson, 2006)
External Content 7: How the US stole thousands of Native American children (posted by Vox (producer Ranjani Chakraborty) as part of their 2019 'Missing Chapter' series for Indigenous Peoples Day)
External Content 8: Xianjing: China, where are my children? (by BBC News, July 2019)
Readings:
Arnold (2001): "...to help assure the survival and continuing vitality of Native American Languages" (Chapter 4 of )
Hinton (2001): Sleeping Languages: Can they be awakened?
Assignments:
Discussion Prompt: Week 7
500-Words Assignment: Week 7
External Content:
External Content 9: Bilingual/Dual Language Education - Families (informational video produced by the Sobrato Family Foundation to provide families with information about the SEAL (Sobrato Early Academic Language) model of bilingual/dual language education works)
External Content 10: Clip from Do You Speak American (PBS documentary, 2005) about transitional bi-dialectal education in Oakland (for analysis in homework)
Readings:
Schmidt (2019): 'Why don't you speak Spanish?' - For Julián Castro and millions of Latinos, the answer is not so simple (Washington Post)
Baker (2001): Chapter 9 - An Introduction to Bilingual Education
Lippi-Green (2012): Chapter 13 - Case Study 1: Moral Panic in Oakland
Assignments
Discussion Prompt: Week 8
500-Words Assignment: Week 8
Video Lessons:
Lesson 11: Intro to Performing/Indexing Identity (slides)
Lesson 12: Code-switching (slides)
External Content:
(optional) External Content: Clip from 'Code-Switching: Jumping between two languages' (demonstration of how to analyze code-switching in conversation, by LangFocus, 2017)
Readings:
Clachar (2016): Codeswitching among African-American English, Spanish and Standard English in computer-mediated discourse: The negotiation of identities among Puerto Rican Students
Assignments:
Discussion Prompt: Week 9
500-Words Assignment: Week 9
Data Sheet 1: Short Code-Switching Examples (from Gumpertz 1977)
Data Sheet 2: A Trilingual IM Conversation (from Barasa 2016)
Video Lessons:
Lesson 13: Indexing Other People's Social Groups with Language (slides)
Lesson 14: Performing Gender (slides)
External Content:
External Content 11: The way we think about biological sex is wrong (TEDx talk by Emily Quinn, 2019)
Readings:
Mesthrie et al. (2009): Chapter 7 - Gender and Language Use
Cameron (1997): Performing Gender Identity: Young men's talk and the construction of heterosexual masculinity
Eckert and McConnell-Ginet (2003): pg. 47-50 - Masculinities and Femininities
(optional/bonus) Queen (2014): Language and Sexual Identities
Assignments:
Discussion Prompt: Week 10
500-Words Assignment: Week 10
Video Lessons:
Lesson 15: Ethnicity and Language (slides)
Readings:
Bucholtz and Hall (2004): Language and Identity
Alim and Smitherman (2012): Chapter 1 - 'Nah, we straight': Black Language and America's First Black President
Assignments:
Discussion Prompt: Week 11
500-Words Assignment: Week 11
Video Lessons:
Lesson 15: Building stereotypes through metaphor (slides)
External Content:
External Content 12: Jane Hill - Language, Race, and White Public Space (1999) (video lesson created by Mike Mena, 2019)
External Content 13: Rusty Barrett - "Language Ideology and Racial Inequality: Competing Functions of Spanish..." (2006) (video lesson created by Mike Mena, 2019)
External Content 14: Jonathan Rosa - "From Mock Spanish to Inverted Spanglish..." (2016) (video lesson created by Mike Mena, 2019)
Readings:
Kiesling (2001): Stances of Whiteness in White Fraternity Men's Discourse
Hill (2009): Chapter 8 - Metaphors, Mocking, and the Racialization of Historically Spanish-Speaking Populations
Assignments:
Discussion Prompt: Week 12
500-Words Assignment: Week 12
Video Lessons:
Lesson 16: Politeness (Tutorial 1): Speech Acts (Note: to be re-recorded before I use it again)
Lesson 17: Politeness (Tutorial 2): Face Theory
Lesson 18: Politeness (Tutorial 3): Cultural Variation
Readings:
Preston (2000): Mowr and mowr bayud spellin': Confessions of a sociolinguist
Reference: Discourse Transcription (Santa Barbara Papers in Linguistics: Volume 4, DuBois et al. (eds.))
Assignments:
Discussion Prompt: Week 13
500-Words Assignment: Week 13
Summary Option 1: Tagliamonte (2005) - Discourse Markers in the conversations of Young Canadians
Summary Option 2: Clift (2016) - Responsive laughter in (dis)affiliation
Summary Option 3: El Refaie (2001) - Metaphors we discriminate by
Summary Option 4: Bolonyai (2005) - Power, knowledge, and rationality in bilingual girls' code choices
External Content:
External Content 15: Literature Reviews: An Overview for Graduate Students (instructional video produced by North Carolina State University Libraries)
Readings:
Lippi-Green (2012): Chapter 7 - Teaching Children How to Discriminate (What we can learn from the Big Bad Wolf)
(example research paper): Nilep (2004) - Identity and code choice...
Assignments:
Discussion Prompt: Week 14
500-Words Assignment: Week 14
Summary Option 1: Prado (2013) - Reality Television and the Metapragmatics of Racism
Summary Option 2: Ray (2016) - Local Identity on the Global Stage: A Sociolinguistic Analysis of JayZ's New Yorker Persona
Summary Option 3: Timberlake (2003) - A Voice so Cruel, and Cold, and Ugly
Video Lessons:
Lesson 19: Using Qualitative Methods in Sociolinguistics Papers (slides)
Lesson 20: Using Quantitative Methods in Sociolinguistics Papers (slides)
Readings:
Marwick and Boyd (2011): I tweet honestly, I tweet passionately: Twitter users, context collapse, and the imagined audience
Assignments:
Discussion Prompt: Week 15
500-Words Assignment: Week 15
Summary Option 1: Hill (2008) - Chapter 3 - The Social Life of Slurs
Summary Option 2: Calhoun (2019) -Vine Racial Comedy as Anti-Hegemonic Humor
Summary Option 3: Bamman et al. (2014) - Gender Identity and Lexical Variation in Social Media
Video Lessons:
Lesson 21: Drawing it Together (slides)
Assignments:
Discussion Prompt: Week 16
500-Words Assignment: Week 16 (optional)
Alim, H. Samy, Smitherman, Geneva, 2012. Artiulate While Black: Barack Obama, Language, and Race in the U.S. Oxford University Press.
Arnold, Robert D., 2001. "...To Help Assure the Survival and Continuing Vitality of Native American Languages", in: Hale, K.L., Hinton, L. (Eds.), The Green Book of Language Revitalization in Practice. Brill, pp. 45-48.
Baker, Colin, 2001. An Introduction to Bilingual Education, Foundations of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. Multilingual Matters LTD, Clevdon.
Bamman, David, Eisenstein, Jacob, Schnoebelen, Tyler, 2014. Gender Identity and Lexical Variation in Social Media. Journal of Sociolinguistics 18.
Barasa, Sandra Nekesa, 2016. Spoken Code-Switching in Written Form? Manifestation of Code-Switching in Computer Mediated Communication. Journal of Language Contact 9.
Bolonyai, Agnes, 2005. ‘Who was the best?’: Power, knowledge and rationality in bilingual girls’ code choices. Journal of Sociolinguistics 9, 3-27.
Brinton, Laurel, Arnovick, Leslie, 2011. The English Language: A Linguistic History. OUP Canada.
Bucholtz, Mary, Hall, Kira, 2004. Language and Identity, in: Duranti, A. (Ed.), A companion to linguistic anthropology. Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Calhoun, Kendra, 2019. Vine Racial Comedy as Anti‐Hegemonic Humor: Linguistic Performance and Generic Innovation. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 29, 27-49.
Cameron, Deborah, 1997. Performing gender identity: Young men's talk and the construction of heterosexual masculinity, in: Johnson, S., Meinhof, U.H. (Eds.), Language and gender: a reader. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Blackwell.
Clachar, Arlene, 2016. Codeswitching among African-American English, Spanish and Standard English in computer-mediated discourse: The negotiation of identities by Puerto Rican students, in: Guzzardo Tamargo, R.E., Mazak, C.M., Couto, M.C.P. (Eds.), Spanish-English Codeswitching in the Caribbean and the US. John Benjamins Publishing Company, pp. 61-80.
Clift, Rebecca, 2016. Don't make me laugh: Resposive laughter in (dis)affiliation. Journal of Pragmatics 100, 73-88.
Eckert, Penelope, McConnell-Ginet, Sally, 2003. Language and Gender. Cambridge University Press.
El Refaie, Elisabeth, 2001. Metaphors we discriminate by: Naturalized themes in Austrian newspaper articles about asylum seekers. Journal of Sociolinguistics 5, 352-371.
Green, Lisa J., 2002. African American English: A Lingusitic Introduction. Cambridge University Press.
Gumperz, John J., 1977. The Sociolinguistic Significance of Conversational Code-Switching. RELC Journal 8.
Hill, Jane H, 2009. The Social Life of Slurs, The everyday language of white racism. John Wiley & Sons.
Hinton, Leanne, 2001. Sleeping Languages: Can they be revived?, in: Hale, K.L., Hinton, L. (Eds.), The Green Book of Language Revitalization in Practice. Brill, pp. 413-417.
Jannedy, Stefanie, Poletto, Robert, Weldon, Tracy L., 2012. Language files: materials for an introduction to language & linguistics, 12th ed. Ohio State University Press.
Jones, Taylor, 2015. Toward a Description of African American Vernacular English Dialect Regions using 'Black Twitter'. American Speech 90.
Kiesling, Scott, 2001. Stances of Whiteness and Hegemony in Fraternity Men's Discourse. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 11.
Lippi-Green, Rosina, 2012. English with an Accent: Language, Ideology and Discrimination in the United States. Routledge.
Marwick, Alice E., Boyd, Danah, 2011. I tweet honestly, I tweet passionately: Twitter users, context collapse, and the imagined audience. New media & society 13, 114-133.
Mesthrie, Rajend, Swann, Joan, Deumert, Ana, Leap, William L., 2009. Introducing Sociolinguistics, 2 ed. Edinburgh University Press.
Nilep, Chad D., 2004. Identity and code choice: Code-switching and social identity among Japanese/English bilingual siblings.
Pardo, Rebecca, 2013. Reality television and the metapragmatics of racism. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 23, 65-81.
Preston, Dennis R., 2000. Mowr and mowr bayud spellin': Confessions of a sociolinguist. Journal of Sociolinguistics 4, 614-621.
Queen, Robin, 2014. Language and Sexual Identities, in: Ehrlich, S., Meyerhoff, M., Holmes, J. (Eds.), The Handbook of Language, Gender, and Sexuality, 2nd ed.
Ray, Jessica, 2016. Local Identity on the Global Stage: A sociolinguistic analysis of Jay Z’s New Yorker persona, Proceedings of the 24th Annual Symposium about Language and Society-Austin.
Schmidt, Samantha, 2019. 'Why don't you speak Spanish?': For Julián Castro and millions of Latinos the answer is not so simple, The Washington Post, Online.
Tagliamonte, Sali, 2005. So who? Like how? Just what?: Discourse markers in the conversations of young Canadians. Journal of Pragmatics 37, 1896-1915.
Timberlake, Phil, 2003. “A Voice So Cruel, and Cold, and Ugly”: In Search of the Pirate Accent. Voice and Speech Review 3, 85-97.
Wolfram, Walt, Schilling, Natalie, 2015. American English: Dialects and Variation, 3rd ed. Wiley Blackwell.
Licensing Statement: All instructional resources on this site are being released under a Creative Commons 2.0 BY-NC license, so you should feel free to use them or remix them, with attribution, if you're preparing your own class!