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Downloadable Syllabus

The readings can be downloaded for your personal use only.
They are also available in hard copy in the Linguistics computer cluster.
Readings are listed under the date on which they will be discussed.


Course Requirements: Students will write 6 2-3 page squibs over the quarter. Each squib will be based on the material of one week, and due on the Monday following that week. The purpose of the squib is to have you reflect at length on some aspect of the material discussed in that week, and to develop an idea. Squibs will be judged on the basis of the originality, depth, and viability of the discussion. Each student will be expected to present several readings in class as well.


Week 1 Introduction


Monday, Sept. 26 Theoretical and Methodological introduction: What linguists have to do to make language sit still. Taking a life-course perspective.

Wednesday, Sept. 28 Approaches to the study of linguistic variability.

LABOV, WILLIAM. 1972. Some principles of linguistic methodology. Language in society, 1.97-120.
ECKERT, PENELOPE. 2005. Three waves of variation study. ms.

Week 2 Childhood: The notion of the individual speaker and the issue of intersubjectivity.

Monday, Oct. 3
How do infants and children emerge as interactive participants?

HAVILAND, JOHN. 2000. Early pointing gestures in Zincantan. Journal of linguistic anthropology, 8. 162-96.
BERKO GLEASON, JEAN AND SUSAN WEINTRAUB. 1976. The acquisition of routines in child language. Language in society. 5. 129-136.

Wednesday, Oct. 5 How do children deal with socially meaningful variation as they learn to use language?

FOULKES, P., DOCHERTY, G.J. and WATT, D. 2005. Phonological variation in child-directed speech. Language, 81.177-206.
LIPPI-GREEN, ROSINA. 1997. Teaching children how to discriminate: what we learn from the Big Bad Wolf. Chapter 5 of English with an accent: language, ideology, and discrimination in the United States. New York: Routledge. 79-103.

Week 3 Late Childhood and Preadolescence: The emergence of a peer-based social order. Commodifying the self.

Monday, Oct. 10
The personal becomes political

FISCHER, J.L. 1958. Social influences on the choice of a linguistic variant. Word, 14.47-56.
TALBOT, MARY. 1992. A synthetic sisterhood: False friends in a teenage magazine. Locating Power: Proceedings of the Second Berkeley Women and Language Conference, ed. by Kira Hall, Mary Bucholtz and Birch Moonwomon, 573-80. Berkeley: Berkeley Women and Language Group.

Wednesday, Oct. 12. Positioning the self in interaction.

GOODWIN, MARJORIE HARNESS, GOODWIN, CHARLES and YAEGER-DROR, MALCAH. 2002. Multi-modality in girls' game disputes. Journal of pragmatics, 34.1621-49.
LABOV, WILLIAM. 1972. Rules for ritual insults. Language in the inner city, ed. by William Labov, 297-353. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
TETREAULT, CHANTAL. 2003. What's in a name? Parental name-calling among French adolescents of Algerian descent. Paper presented at SALSA 11, Austin.

Week 4: TBA

Monday, Oct. 17. NOTE UNUSUAL VENUE:
110-110 CASA Colloquium. Speaker: Michael Silverstein.

Readings TBA

Wednesday, Oct. 19 TBA

Week 5. Adolescence: Class, ethnicity, and the construction of social categories.

Monday, Oct. 24. Social groups and networks

LABOV, William. 1972. The linguistic consequences of being a lame. Language in the Inner City, ed. by W. Labov. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Wednesday, Oct. 26 Social practice and categorization

MENDOZA-DENTON, NORMA. ms. Chap. 1. The making of Latina youth styles. Oxford: Blackwell.
ECKERT, PENELOPE. 2000. Chapters 2,5. Linguistic variation as social practice. Oxford: Blackwell.

Week 6 Adulthood: Class, power and ideology

Monday, Oct. 31.
Language, work, and social change

LABOV, WILLIAM. 1963. The social motivation of a sound change. Word, 18.1-42.
GAL, SUSAN. 1978. Peasant men can't get wives: Language change and sex roles in a bilingual community. Language in Society, 7.1-16.
ZHANG, QING. in press. A Chinese yuppie in Beijing: Phonological variation and the construction of a new professional identity. Language in society.

Wednesday, Nov. 2. The linguistic market

BOURDIEU, PIERRE. 1977. The economics of linguistic exchanges. Social Science Information, 16.645-68.

Week 7 Stylistic practice, ideology, and issues of authenticity

Monday, Nov. 7.
Performativity

MILLER, LAURA. 2004. "Those naughty teenage girls: Japanese Kogals, slang, and media assessments". Journal of linguistic anthropology, 14.
BUCHOLTZ, MARY. 1999. You da man: Narrating the racial other in the production of white masculinity. Journal of sociolinguistics, 3.443-60.
MENDOZA-DENTON, NORMA. 1996. 'Muy macha': Gender and ideology in gang-girls' discourse about makeup. Ethnos 61:1-2, 47-63.
CAMERON, DEBORAH. 1997. Performing gender identity: Young men's talk and the construction of heterosexual masculinity. Language and masculinity, ed. by Sally Johnson and Ulrike Hanna Meinhof, 47-64. Oxford: Blackwell.

Wednesday, Nov. 9. Style and the meaning of variation

BELL, ALLAN. 1984. Style as audience design. Language in society 13. 135-204.
COUPLAND, NIKOLAS. 2001. Language, situation, and the relational self: Theorizing dialect-style in sociolinguistics. Style and sociolinguistic variation. ed. by Penelope Eckert and John Rickford. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 185-210.
IRVINE, JUDITH. 2001. "Style" as distinctiveness: The culture and ideology of linguistic differentiation. Style and sociolinguistic variation. ed. by Penelope Eckert and John Rickford. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 21-43.

Week 8 Two guests discussing new methods and issues in variation

Monday, November 14. Rob Podesva: Sociophonetic study of style

Wednesday, Nov. 16 Kathryn Campbell-Kibler: Listeners' perceptions of variation

WOLFRAM, WALT AND RALPH FASOLD. 1997. Field methods in the study of social dialects. Nikolas Coupland and Adam Jaworski eds. Sociolinguistics: a reader and coursebook. New York: St. Martin's. excerpt pp. 110-115.
LAMBERT, W.E., R.C. HODGSON, R.C. GARDNER AND S. FILENBAUM. 1960. Evaluational reactions to spoken languages. Journal of abnormal and social psychology. 60:1. 44-51.
GILES, HOWARD AND ANDREW C. BILLINGS. 2004. Assessing language attitudes: Speaker evaluation studies. Alan Davies and Catherine Elder eds. The handbook of applied linguistics. Cambridge: Blackwell. 187-209.
RUBIN, DONALD L. AND KIM A. SMITH. 1990. Effects of accent, ethnicity, and lecture topic on undergraduates' perceptions of nonnative English-speaking teaching assistants. International journal of intercultural relations. 14. 337-353.
ROSENTHAL, MARILYN. 1974. The magic boxes: Pre-school children's attitudes toward Black and standard English. The Florida reporter. 55-93.

Week 9 Configurations: networks and speech communities


Monday, Nov. 28 Geography, networks and the spread of linguistic change

MILROY, JAMES and MILROY, LESLEY. 1985. Linguistic change, social network and speaker innovation. Journal of Linguistics, 21.339-84.
ASH, SHARON and MYHILL, JOHN. 1986. Linguistic correlates of inter-ethnic contact. Diversity and diachrony, ed. by David Sankoff, 33-44. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Wednesday, Nov. 30 The notion of the speech community.

RICKFORD, JOHN. 1986. The need for new approaches to class analysis in sociolinguistics. Language and communication, 6. 215-21.
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.

Week 10 Old age and the discursive construction of identity


Monday, Dec. 5 Mary Rose: The ethnographic study of variation in a senior community.

COUPLAND, NIKOLAS, JUSTINE COUPLAND AND HOWARD GILES. 1991. Language, society and the elderly. Chapter 1 and Chapter 3

Wednesday, Dec. 7 Wrap-up