Dr Peter Skrandies TW3.6.01f

Available as an outside option to all undergraduate and General Course students. Students can take this course in any year of their studies following approval from the teacher responsible and subject to their own programme regulations.

The course will introduce students to key (socio)linguistic concepts (semantic and pragmatic meaning, discourse, register, genre, dialect, idiolect, sociolect) employed in the analysis of language use as a social process. Students will explore the reciprocal relationship between language and specific social contexts and structures (class, gender, ethnicity), and study the role that language plays in the creation, maintenance and change of social relations and institutions. Important themes are changing attitudes to language and the prestige afforded to particular languages and language varieties. The use of language for academic purposes will be analysed, as will be situations of language contact, multilingualism and the role of translation in intercultural and international communication. The implications and consequences for less widely used languages of the emergence of English (and other widely spoken languages) as global lingua francas will be outlined and discussed.

10 hours of lectures and 10 hours of classes in the MT. 10 hours of lectures and 10 hours of classes in the LT. 1 hour of lectures and 1 hour of classes in the ST.

Two hours per week, featuring: (a) Lectures on a range of concepts and themes; (b) classes including students' presentations; (c) revision workshops; (d) tutorials. Structured activities will take place in week 11 of the Michaelmas and the Lent Term. 

Short essays, linguistic analyses, presentations.

• Mesthrie, Rajend (ed) (2011) The Cambridge Handbook of Sociolinguistics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
• Meyerhoff, Miriam (2011). Introducing Sociolinguistics, 2nd edition, London: Routledge;
• Mooney, Annabelle et al (2010). Language, Society and Power. An Introduction, 3rd edition, London: Routledge
• Wardhaugh, Ronald (2010). An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell 
• Weber, Jean-Jacques & Kristine Horner (2012). Introducing Multilingualism. A Social Approach, Routledge: London 
• Yule, George (2010). The Study of Language, 4th ed., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
• Wodak, Ruth et al (2011) The SAGE handbook of sociolinguistics, London: SAGE

Exam (75%, duration: 3 hours) in the main exam period.
Essay (25%, 3500 words) in the ST.