WELCOME TO THE COURSE

Welcome to LING 1122: Language in Social Context. This course examines the complex relationship between language and social life: how language is shaped by social, cultural and contextual factors and, equally importantly, how linguistic practices participate in constructing identities, relationships, institutions, inequalities and social change.

You have encountered many sociolinguistic concepts at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. For that reason, this course will not approach sociolinguistics as a collection of definitions to be memorised. At doctoral level, our concern is different. We will revisit familiar concepts in order to interrogate their assumptions, compare competing explanations, examine the quality of evidence used to support claims, and consider what different theoretical lenses enable us to see - or prevent us from seeing.