LING2066 Variation Analysis
Dr. Jonathan Havenhill
Advanced Course. Sem 2 , 6 credits
Course Description
Language is inherently variable. No two people speak the same way, nor does one person use the same speech patterns in all contexts. This type of variation is not random, but structured, and depends on the identities of the speaker and their audience, the topic of conversation, the speaker’s attitude, and a variety of other social and linguistic factors. This course will introduce students to the field of variationist sociolinguistics, which is concerned with the systematic study of language variation and its relationship to linguistic structure and social meaning. This course will focus on phonetic, phonological, and morphophonological variation, but variation at other levels of linguistic structure will also be addressed. Students will learn to describe and interpret patterns of linguistic variation, discuss and evaluate primary studies of sociolinguistic variation, and implement research methods and computational tools for investigating variation. Students will synthesize these skills by conducting a small-scale original study of sociolinguistic variation as a final project.
Pre-requisite
LING1000, and LING2004
Assessment:
100% coursework
Course Timeslots (1)
TUE
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CPD-2.58