Fall 2025: Teaching Assistant for Dr. Deborah Tannen
Spring 2026: Instructor of Record
This course explores the nature of cross-cultural communication from the perspective of interactional sociolinguistics. We take a broad view of "culture," which includes geographic region, ethnicity, age, socioeconomic class, gender, and sexuality. We examine the relationship between language and culture by investigating aspects of language use that vary by culture, including turn-taking, specific speech acts, silence, politeness, and nonverbal cues. In addition to considering language use in everyday conversation, we examine communication in digital media, including emails and social media sites, and in institutional contexts, including education, business, law, and medicine. Class activities include discussion in whole-class and small-group formats, lectures, video presentations, and hands-on data analysis. Requirements include a solid attendance record, active participation in class discussions, reflections on/responses to readings, field notes (in which students apply course content to short analyses of interactions outside the classroom), and short papers analyzing recordings of naturally occurring discourse collected by students.
There are no prerequisites; no prior background in linguistics is required or expected. The course is designed for undergraduate students from all majors and schools.