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Sociolinguistic Theory and Analysis Linguistics 250

This course is an introduction to sociolinguistic theory. The course is intended to be a quarter-long conversation, with the goal of engaging with the deeper questions about the relation between language and social practice. Students will submit a two-page squib each week about an issue related to the week's readings. This must not be a summary or discussion of the readings, but a result of thought about some issue or issues that arose in the course of the readings. The squibs should be uploaded to Canvas no later than 8 AM on the day of class. Note: The syllabus may change as we go along. The readings can be found on Canvas.

Week 1 Sept.26, 28

Introduction: Language as social practice Reading: Labov, William. 1963. The social motivation of a sound change. Word, 18.1-42 Reprinted in Sociolinguistic Patterns. Recommended: Gumperz, John J. 1958. Dialect differences and social stratification in a north Indian village. American Anthropologist, 60.668-82. Labov, William. 1972. Some principles of linguistic methodology. Language in society, 1.97-120.

Week 2 Oct. 2, 4

The locus of study: Languages and communities as ideological constructs Pratt, Mary Louise. 1988. Linguistic utopias. the linguistics of writing: Arguments between language and literature, ed. by Nigel Fabb, Derek Attridge, Alan Durant and Colin MacCabe, 48-66. New York: Methuen. Woolard, Kathryn A. and Schieffelin, Bambi B. 1994. Language ideology. Annual Review of Anthropology, 23. 55-82. Irvine, Judith T. and Gal, Susan. 2000. Language ideology and linguistic differentiation. Regimes of language: Ideologies, politics, and identities, ed. by P.V. Kroskrity, 35-83. Santa Fe NM: SAR Press.

October 10

October 17

Categories and practice: Class, gender, ethnicity Kroch, Anthony S. 1978. Toward a theory of social dialect variation. Language in Society, 7.17-36. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. The economics of linguistic exchanges. Social Science Information, 16.645-68. Eckert, Penelope and Mcconnell-Ginet, Sally. 1992. Think practically and look locally: Language and gender as community-based practice. Annual Review of Anthropology. 21. 461-90. Fought, Carmen. 1999. A majority sound change in a minority community /u/-fronting in Chicano English. Journal of sociolinguistics, 3.5-23.

October 24

The object of study: Speakers, identity and agency Bucholtz, Mary and Hall, Kira. 2005. Identity and interaction: a sociocultural linguistic approach. Discourse studies, 7.585-614. Ahearn, Laura. 2001. Language and agency. Annual Review of Anthropology, 30.109-37.

October 31

Indexicality Eckert, Penelope. 2012. Three waves of variation study: The emergence of meaning in the study of variation. Annual Review of Anthropology, 41.87-100. Eckert, Penelope. 2008. Variation and the indexical field. Journal of sociolinguistics, 12.453-76. Inoue, Miyako. 2004. What does language remember?: Indexical inversion and the naturalized history of Japanese women. Journal of linguistic anthropology, 14.39-56. Recommended: Silverstein, Michael. 2003. Indexical order and the dialectics of sociolinguistic life. Language and communication, 23.193-229.

November 7

Style and enregisterment Zhang, Qing. 2005. A Chinese yuppie in Beijing: Phonological variation and the construction of a new professional identity. Language in society, 34.431-66. Podesva, Robert. 2007. Phonation type as a stylistic variable: The use of falsetto in constructing a persona. Journal of sociolinguistics, 11.478-504. Agha, Asif. 2003. The social life of a cultural value. Language and communication, 23.231-73. Johnstone, Barbara, Andrus, Jennifer and Danielson, Andrew E. 2006. Mobility, indexicality, and the enregisterment of "Pittsburghese". Journal of English linguistics, 34.77-104.

November 14

Language contact and shift Sharma, Devyani. 2011. Style, repertoire and social change in British Asian English. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 15.464-92. Kulick, Don. 1993. Speaking as a woman: Structure and gender in domestic arguments in a Papua New Guinean village. Cultural Anthropology, 8.510-41. Gal, Susan. 1978. Peasant men can't get wives: Language change and sex roles in a bilingual community. Language in Society, 7.1-16. Besnier, Niko. 2002. Transgenderism, locality, and the Miss Galaxy beauty pageant in Tonga. American Ethnologist, 29.534-66.

November 28

The interactional organization of speech Goffman, Erving. 1967. On face work. Interaction Ritual, 5-45. New York: Doubleday. Bauman, Richard. 2001. The ethnography of genre in a Mexican market: Form, function, variation. Stylistic variation in language, ed. by Penelope Eckert and John Rickford, 57-77. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Irvine, Judith. 1974. Strategies of status manipulation in the Wolof greeting. Explorations in the ethnography of speaking, ed. by Richard Bauman and Joel Sherzer, 167-91. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schegloff, E. and Sacks, H. 1973. Opening up closings. Semiotica, 8.69-99.

December 5

Conclusions Here are the readings you requested: Lakoff, Robin. 1973. Language and woman's place. Language in society, 2.45-80. Cameron, D., Mcalinden, F. and O'leary, K. 1988. Lakoff in context: The social and linguistic function of tag questions. Women in Their Speech Communities: New Perspectives on Language and Sex, ed. by Jennifer Coates and Deborah Cameron, 74-93. London and New York: Longman. O'barr, W. M. and Atkins, B. K. 1980. "Women's language" or "powerless language"? Women and Language in Literature and Society, 93-110. New York: Praeger (Reissued in 1986 by Greenwood). Andersen, Elaine Slosberg. 1990. Speaking with style: The sociolinguistic skills of children. London: Routledge. Mitchell-Kernan, Claudia (1972) Signifying and Marking: Two African-American Speech Acts. In: John Gumperz and Dell Hymes eds. Directions in Sociolinguistics. Cambridge: Blackwell. 161-79. Bucholtz, Mary. 2000. 'Why be normal?': Language and identity practices in a community of nerd girls. Language in society, 28.203-23. Bucholtz, Mary. 2001. The whiteness of nerds: Superstandard English and racial markedness. Journal of linguistic anthropology, 11.84-100. Eckert, Penelope. 2011. Language and power in the preadolescent heterosexual market. American Speech, 86.85-97.