ANTH 250 - Language, Culture, and Society

Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)

This course draws on a wide range of theoretical perspectives in exploring a particular problem, emphasizing the contribution of linguistics and linguistic anthropology to issues that bear on research in a number of disciplines. At issue in each selected course topic are the complex ways in which cultures, societies, and individuals are interrelated in the act of using language within and across particular speech communities.

May be repeated for credit if the topic has changed.

Topic for 2014/15a: Language, Culture and Society. This class offers an advanced introduction to the central problems of the relationship between language, culture and society. The first third of the class develops a distinctively anthropological approach to the formal and functional characteristics of human language (i.e., one that is comparative across species and attentive to the meaningfulness and motivated character of signs). The second third of the class provides the theoretical and methodological tools for understanding how linguistically-mediated interaction counts as a power-laden social action. The last third of the class considers how these theories can be used to illuminate the way in which language mediates large-scale social institutions (e.g., the relationship between language, race and prejudice in educational contexts in the United States, etc.) and social processes (e.g., the significance of digital media in processes of globalization). Students will also be trained in the methodology of scholars interested in language, culture, and society: the video-recording, transcription, and analysis of naturally occurring talk. Mr. Smith.

Two 75-minute periods.