This course provides an overview of the field of sociolinguistics, or the study of language in its social and cultural contexts. Among the questions posed in the course are these: How and why do speakers select among the range of linguistic varieties in their repertoire, standard and vernacular, regional-sounding or not, more writerly or more oral, gendered in one way or another, and so on? How can such variation be accounted for in a theory of language? What kind of grammar is involved in knowing how to participate in conversations, and how do conversational styles differ from group to group? What causes misunderstanding and what enables understanding in interaction among people who are different? What are the effects of multilingualism and language contact, for speakers and for languages? How and why do standard varieties of languages come to be, and how are they perpetuated? What are the relationships between language, society, and the individual speaker? There will be several written assignments in addition to regular reading assignments, as well as a mid-term exam and a final project.
