Language and Identity: A Linguistic Exploration of Accents, Dialects, Slang, and Grammar
Level: Open to students entering grades 11 or 12 or freshman year of college in fall 2010.
Session: I, June 28-July 16, 2010
Days & Time: Monday-Friday, 10:00 AM-12:00 PM and 2:30-4:30 PM
Instructor: Susan J. Behrens
Related Courses: Students interested in this course might also be interested in Philosophy of Food and the Body, offered in Session II.
"What surprised me was how much I enjoyed all the subject matter; it was highly relevant to everything we say and how we say it in our daily lives."
–Felix Li, 2009
Course Description
Students examine language as a vital part of culture and social structure while discovering how it reflects and shapes our lives. The course tackles assumptions and myths we hold about language. For example, do men and women really speak different languages? What exactly is Ebonics? Do Eskimo languages have 17 separate words for snow? What is the best way to start and end a conversation? Students employ a multi-disciplinary approach to investigating language behavior and variation in different cultures.
The term project provides each student with the opportunity to conduct fieldwork as a means to research his or her own culture and its use of language. Students come to better understand themselves as members of their own culture and the use of language as a shaper of our self-identities in human society.
Students work with material in a seminar format in the morning sessions. Afternoons are devoted to fieldwork and other hands-on applications including probing popular culture, literature, and film for evidence of language used as a way to define cultural and social identities.
Students develop the skills of data collection and cross-linguistic and cross-cultural analysis and come away with a perspective of multiple viewpoints related to language correctness and relativity.
Instructor(s)
Faculty
Susan J. Behrens
Susan J. Behrens holds a Ph.D. in Linguistics from Brown University. She has taught issues of language and speech to all ages, in New York and abroad. Her recent research explores how conversations work and don’t work. She is a professor of communication sciences and disorders at Marymount Manhattan College and an associate of the Institute for Writing and Thinking at Bard College.
Specific course information, such as hours and instructors, are subject to change at the discretion of the University.
