LING 025. Sociolinguistics: Language, Culture, and Society

(Cross-listed as SOAN 040B)
This course is an introduction to the connection between language and social and identity as it is studied from a variety of methodologies and perspectives, including ethnography, variationist sociolinguistics, and experimental sociolinguistics in the lab. Topics to be examined include the following: How do we create our intersecting identities when we use language? How do social factors such as age, gender, ethnicity, and socioeconomic class influence the way people use language? How do individual speakers use language differently in different situations? How do social and regional dialects differ from each other, and why? How does language change spread within and between communities? Students will collect and analyze data from real-life speech to explore the social correlates of linguistic behavior, using both qualitative and quantitative methods to analyze their data.
Social Sciences.
1 credit.
Eligible for ESCH
Fall 2022. Fuller Medina.
Spring 2023. Conrod.
Fall 2023. Fuller Medina.
Spring 2024. Staff.
Fall 2024. Staff.
Catalog chapter: Linguistics
Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/linguistics

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