Language in the United States

Course Description

Students will develop an understanding of the history and current status of the languages of the United States. They will use linguistic data and structure to inform study of language variation, history, contact, endangerment, and revitalization.

Assignments: Weekly readings and short written reflections. Students will “adopt” a language variety (language/dialect) and deliver a presentation addressing how the themes of the class relate to the variety in question.

Audience

Students with interests in the history and culture of the United States, sociolinguistics, language contact, and language change.

Tentative topics list

• Language history: History of Native American languages; Language diversity and community size (Pacheco Coelho et al. 2019)

• Language contact: Spanish-English code-mixing; Michif (a mixed language); American Sign Language; Gullah (a creole)

• Language variation: Speech communities (Eckert 1988); linguistic geography (Dinkin 2009?); Twitter and dialects of African-American English (Jones 2018); Asian-American English (Cheng 2021?)

• Language endangerment and maintenance: Wampanoag (Jessie Little Doe Baird), Hawaiian, Navajo

• Language policy: Rickford & King (2016)

Literature

There is no textbook for this course. Readings will be provided on Ilias.