Contact information

Dr. Susanna Cumming

• Office: South Hall 3523
• Phone: 893-7241
• E-mail: cumming@linguistics.ucsb.edu
• Office hour: Monday 3-4 and by appointment
• Class website: http://www.linguistics.ucsb.edu/faculty/cumming/ling50/index.htm
  (Assignments and handouts will be linked from the website as they become available.)
  

Course Description

This course is about how language can be used to manipulate people's behavior by imposing a particular perspective or conceptual organization on reality. While in fact all language use has this aspect (neutral or "objective" language is a myth), we will focus on language uses which are explicitly persuasive - for instance, newspaper editorials, political speeches, and advertisements. We will also look at uses of language which deceive (deliberately or otherwise) by sneaking a covert bias into supposedly "objective" reporting - for instance, news articles, websites, product labels, legal documents. The emphasis is on linking particular kinds of bias in language to particular language forms, including words, sentence types, and text structure.

Assignments

(proportion of grade is in parentheses)

• Weekly readings (except for Weeks 1 and 10). All from a packet, available at AS Notes (next to the UCen).
• Three homework exercises in which you apply concepts from the class to texts you encounter in everyday life. Assignments will be handed out in section, and are due in section in the week for which they are assigned. (10% each = 30%).
• An oral presentation of one of your homework assignments to your classmates in section. (10%).
• A final project synthesizing concepts from the course in the interpretation of a text of your choice (20%). A short proposal for the final project is due in class the Monday of the last week. (Required; included in project grade).
• Two in-class quizzes (10% each = 20%) and a final exam (20%).

Final exam: Monday March 17, 4-7 PM. Final projects due at the exam.

Schedule

 

Topic	Work	Monday	Wednesday	Friday
Introduction: Constructing reality with language		1/6 Handout: Language and Reality	1/8 Handout: Language and Thought	1/10 Handout: Metaphor and Policy
Metaphor and world view	Reading: Lakoff, Bolinger chap. 12	1/13 Handouts: Metaphor, Radial Categories	1/15 Handout: 9/11 Metaphors	1/17 Handout: Metaphor in Advertising
Making things sound better (or worse): Euphemism and dysphemism	Exercise 1 due: Metaphor Reading: Allan & Burridge chap. 1, Bolinger chap. 10	1/20 Holiday: no class	1/22 Handout: Conventional Euphemsim and Dysphemism	1/24 Handout: Euphemism data
Style and seduction	Reading: Sandig & Selting	1/27 Style	1/29 Non-propositional meaning Sample questions for Quiz 1	1/31 Quiz 1
Reifying and removing: Jargon	Reading: Nash	2/3 Handout: Jargon	2/5 Jargon and grammar	2/7 More jargon examples
Attributing responsibility: Agency	Exercise 2 due: Euphemism & Style Reading: Duranti	2/10	2/12 Agency	2/14 Blame
Claiming authority: Evidentiality	Reading: Chafe	2/17 Holiday: no class	2/19 Evidentiality	2/21 Evidentiality on the Internet
Street solidarity: Slang	Exercise 3 due: Jargon Reading: Laird & Gorrell eds.	2/24 Slang Quiz sample questions	2/26 Slang and grammar: 'like'	2/28 Quiz 2
Saying what you don't mean: Sarcasm	Reading: Haiman	3/3 Sarcasm	3/5 Sarcasm: Prosody Electronically Mediated Communication	3/7 EMC Data
Style and constructed identity: E-dialects; Review		3/10 Bulletin boards and power Project proposal due	3/12 Sample questions for final	3/14 Summary