Postgraduate Course: Introduction to Sociolinguistics (LASC11095)
Course Outline
| School |
School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences |
College |
College of Humanities and Social Science |
| Course type |
Standard |
Availability |
Available to all students |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) |
SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Credits |
10 |
| Home subject area |
Language Sciences |
Other subject area |
None |
| Course website |
None |
|
|
| Course description |
Sociolinguistics can be defined as the study of language in use. In general, the questions it asks are: How do people talk in different contexts, with different addressees, for different purposes?
But in addition to having the descriptive goals of documenting this kind of diversity and variation, sociolinguistics also attempts to explore why particular patterns and tendencies have become conventionalised among different communities of speakers. What motivates different linguistic choices? And what communicative and social functions are served by the choices we make in how we use language? |
Entry Requirements
| Pre-requisites |
|
Co-requisites |
|
| Prohibited Combinations |
|
Other requirements |
None
|
| Additional Costs |
None |
Course Delivery Information
|
| Delivery period: 2010/11 Semester 1, Available to all students (SV1)
|
WebCT enabled: Yes |
Quota: None |
| Location |
Activity |
Description |
Weeks |
Monday |
Tuesday |
Wednesday |
Thursday |
Friday |
| Central | Lecture | | 1-11 | | 09:00 - 10:50 | | | |
| First Class |
Week 1, Tuesday, 09:00 - 10:50, Zone: Central. 3.11 Dugald Stewart Building |
Summary of Intended Learning Outcomes
Our chief objectives in the course are to:
- Develop systematic approaches to studying the differences in how we use language; and
- Develop a distinctively linguistic perspective in how we describe and explain what we observe.
The terminology and knowledge that you are simultaneously developing in the core courses on linguistic structure will be extremely useful to you, and as the semester progresses, you should find you can draw on insights from those courses more and more often in your discussion of sociolinguistics.
Similarly, the skills and approaches you are developing in the Introduction to Discourse Analysis are a perfect complement to the skills and approaches we focus on in this course. By the end of the semester, you will be able to synthesise what you have learnt about the qualitative analysis of language in use (discourse analysis) with the quantitative analysis of language in use(our focus in sociolinguistics).
|
Assessment Information
| One 2 hour examination (100%) |
| Please see Visiting Student Prospectus website for Visiting Student Assessment information |
Special Arrangements
| Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser |
Dr Joseph Gafaranga
Tel: (0131 6)50 3496
Email: josephg@ling.ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary |
Miss Toni Noble
Tel: (0131 6)51 3188
Email: Toni.noble@ed.ac.uk |
|
copyright 2010 The University of Edinburgh -
1 September 2010 6:13 am
|
University Homepage