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Sociolinguistics (ENG -316): Course Outline (ENG-316)

Sociolinguistics studies how language interacts with society, examining how it reflects and shapes culture, identity, gender, class, and ethnicity, while exploring variations and changes across groups, regions, and contexts.

Course description

The aim of this course is to introduce some of the social implications of language use by exploring its central role in the transmission of social and cultural values. In focusing on how language is used to express various social relationships, it aims to familiarise students with a range of investigative methods in current sociolinguistics The aim of this course is to introduce some of the social implications of language use by exploring its central role in the transmission of social and cultural values. In focusing on how language is used to express various social relationships, it aims to familiarise students with a range of investigative methods in current sociolinguistic research.

Course objectives

On completing this course students will be able to:

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  • Understand sociolinguistics and its important domains
  • Understand and discuss the relationship between sociolinguistics and society
  • Relationship of sociolinguistics with ELT

Teaching-learning Strategies

Teaching will be done through the lecture method with a combination of tasks/projects and presentations

Assessment and Examinations

Assessment will be done as per university/department policy.

Course contents

Unit –I: Introduction to Sociolinguistics

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  • Micro and Macro Sociolinguistics
  • Sociolinguistics and Sociology of Language

Unit –II: Basic Issues, Concepts and Approaches

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  • Relations between language and society
  • Prescriptivism
  • Standardization
  • Speech vs Writing
  • Societies and speech communities
  • Monolingualism and multilingualism

Unit –III: Dialectology

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  • Modern approaches to the dialect
  • More challenges for dialectologists
  • Social Dialectology/Urban Dialectology
  • Principles and methods in variationist sociolinguistics
  • Fieldwork methods in variationist sociolinguistics
  • Stylistic and social categories

Unit –IV: Language Variation and Change

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  • Models of language change
  • Vernacular maintenance and change
  • New approaches to variation and change: The need for integration

Unit –IV: Language Choice and Code switching

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  • Evaluation and accommodation: language variation as meaningful
  • Language choice in bilingual communities
  • Code-switching in bidialectal and bilingual communities
  • Code-switching and style-shifting

Unit –V: Gender and Language Use

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  • Women’s and Men’s languages
  • Gender in interaction: ‘Deficit’, ‘Dominance’ and ‘Difference’
  • Gender and Politeness
  • Contextualized approaches: performance and performativity

 

Unit –VI: Language Contact

  • Contact and borrowing

  • Language maintenance, shift, and death
  • Language Contact
  • Pidgins and Creoles
  • Pidgin Structures and Theories of their origin
  • Creole structures and theories of their origin
  • Language Spread and ‘New’ Varieties of English

Suggested Readings