Note: the following schedule is subject to change.
| Week | Date | Topic | Reading | Assignments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | W 1/19 | Course Overview; Requirements | ||
| F 1/21 | Language, grammar, and identity | |||
| 2 | M 1/24 | Is French a logical language? | LgMyths 4, 14 | |
| W 1/26 | Multilingualism, minority languages, and language policy | Grosjean 1982, Ch. 1 | ||
| F 1/28 | ||||
| 3 | M 1/31 | |||
| W 2/2 | Language policy in America: The Official English movement | Draper & Jimenez 1992; Hayakawa 1992; Shumway1992 |
||
| F 2/4 | ASL and deaf education | Perlmutter 1986, 1991 | ||
| 4 | M 2/7 | Language policy in America: The Official English movement | Nunberg 1997; Rodriguez 1980 |
|
| W 2/9 | Are some languages more complex than others? | LgMyths 10, 19; Macauley podcast |
||
| F 2/11 | Pidgins, creoles, and complexity | Bickerton 1983 | ||
| 5 | M 2/14 | Paper #1 due | ||
| W 2/16 | Language death and language revitalization | Krauss 1992; Hale 1992 | ||
| F 2/18 | In-Class Quiz #1 | |||
| 6 | Tu 2/22 | No Class | ||
| W 2/23 | Language death and language revitalization (Guest lecturer: Prof. Cathy O’Connor) |
McCloskey 2007; Zepeda & Hill 1991 |
||
| F 2/25 | The Linguists (documentary film) | |||
| 7 | M 2/28 | Legal language and the myth of precision | Solan 1993, Intro, Ch. 1 | |
| W 3/2 | Resolving structural ambiguities: “Canons of construction” | Solan 1993, Ch. 2 (28-38) | ||
| F 3/4 | ||||
| 8 | M 3/7 | Adverbs and the Rule of Lenity | Solan 1993, Ch. 3 (64-76) | |
| W 3/9 | Pronouns and the law | Solan 1993, Ch. 2 (38-45) | Paper #2 due Th 3/10 | |
| F 3/11 | No Class | |||
| Spring Break (Sa 3/12 – Su 3/20) | ||||
| 9 | M 3/21 | What is said vs. what is meant: perjury, defamation, and literal meaning | Devlin 1997, Ch. 9 (208-235) | |
| W 3/23 | ||||
| F 3/25 | Solan & Tiersma 2005, Ch. 11 | |||
| 10 | M 3/28 | |||
| W 3/30 | In-class Quiz #2 | |||
| F 4/1 | Doing things with words | Austin 1956/1961 | ||
| 11 | M 4/4 | |||
| W 4/6 | No Class | |||
| F 4/8 | “Consensual” searches | Solan & Tiersma 2005, Ch. 3 | ||
| 12 | M 4/11 | Is the English language in decline? And who’s to blame? | Simon 1980a; LgMyths 8, 12 |
|
| W 4/13 | Standardization, prescriptivism, and the development of Standard English | Milroy & Milroy 1999, Ch. 1, 2 | ||
| F 4/15 | Paper #3 due | |||
| 13 | W 4/20 | Maintaining the standard: Language guardians | Nunberg 1983; Simon 1980b excerpt #1 |
|
| Th 4/21 | Non-standard dialects in the classroom: The Oakland Ebonics controversy | Ebonics primary doc‘s; Raspberry 1996; Cleaver 1997 |
||
| F 4/22 | Pullum 1999 | |||
| 14 | M 4/25 | In-class quiz #3 | ||
| W 4/27 | More on the grammar of AAVE | |||
| F 4/29 | Split infinitives, stranded prepositions, and other grammatical “horrors“ | LgMyths 1, 16; Simon 1980b excerpt #2 |
||
| 15 | M 5/2 | Pullum 2010 | ||
| W 5/4 | Course Wrap-up; Evaluations | |||
| 16 | W 5/11 | Paper #4 due (at 5pm) | ||