Introduction to Sociolinguistics

This proseminar will introduce the field of sociolinguistics, which is the study of the relationship between language and the social contexts in which it is used. This might seem rather obvious when thinking of bi- or multilingual speech communities where speakers switch between languages in different domains of their lives – for instance, when a family’s home language differs from the language of the overall community, or when a student’s educational language is different from their social one. However, language variation can also be observed in monolingual speech communities, e.g. when speakers use more vernacular forms when talking to their peers but switch to standard speech in formal contexts. In this course we are going to investigate how social factors influence the linguistic choices people make consciously or subconsciously. Based on selected background readings and classic as well as recent sociolinguistic studies, we will discuss aspects such as regional variation and dialects, gender, age, ethnicity, social class, politeness, and language attitudes. These readings will be complemented by hands-on analyses of both written and spoken language data.

Course readings will be discussed in the first session.

Active participation, obligatory weekly readings or small tasks, and work on an individual project which is presented in class and handed in as a written a term paper (3,500-4,000 words).