A person’s language and language use reflect their background, identity, and intentions in conversation. This course provides an introduction to sociolinguistics which studies language as a social behavior. We will cover foundation issues, analytical tools and current debates in sociolinguistics, based on Miriam Meyerhoff’s textbook “Introducing Sociolinguistics” (Chapter 1-12 ; available online in the HU library). In addition, we will deal with a selection of case studies (e.g., negative concord - I ain't never lost a fight, Labov 1972, multiple modals - Surely, he must be going to stop talking soon, Halliday 1970) based on varieties of English to address language users’ register knowledge in relation to their grammatical knowledge.
- Kursverantwortliche/r: Mingya Liu
Semester: SoSe 2024