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CLASS MEETING TIME AND LOCATION
Cummings Art 2, Stanford University
Tue./Fri. 10:15 a.m.-12:00 p.m.
DESCRIPTION
The concept of identity--the social positioning of self and othe--has long informed sociolinguistic research, ever since the earliest variationist studies definitively showed that a speaker's use of linguistic variables is closely connected to her or his position within a complex social matrix of age, class, gender, ethnicity, and many other factors. In the decades that followed, abundant examples of identity work through language emerged in the sociolinguistic literature. Such research has been invaluable for launching sociolinguistic investigations of identity as well as for the insights it has yielded regarding the most productive theories and methods for studying this topic. However, as many sociolinguists have noted, the approach taken in this body of scholarship also has limitations; much of the research proceeds by taking social groupings as analytic givens rather than as part of what is to be discovered empirically. More recently, such approaches have come to be problematized within sociolinguistic research, as researchers have increasingly focused on identity not as the explanation for sociolinguistic patterning but as a social phenomenon requiring explanation in its own right. In pursuing this inquiry, sociolinguists avail themselves of a broad set of methodological tools in order to provide a solid empirical grounding for the study of social positioning as an outcome of language use. This perspective shifts the research focus from taken-for-granted categorizations and social groupings to an explicit examination of identity as an intersubjectively negotiated social action. The course addresses a wide range of theoretical and methodological perspectives on identity in both canonical and recent studies in order to provide students with the necessary skills and knowledge to undertake original research in this growing area of sociolinguistics.
PREREQUISITES
A previous graduate course in sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, and/or socially oriented discourse analysis is recommended but not required.
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