LING 232: Introduction to Language and Society
Course description (Spr 10)
In many introductory linguistics courses students are still told that the Eskimos have a
great number of words for ‘snow’, many more than has, say, English. Geoff Pullum has
called this false belief “unredeemed piffle”, and maintains that “hardly anyone cares
enough to think about trying to determine what the facts are” (Pullum 1991). In this
course we do care about the facts, especially as they concern language grounded in and
permeating society.
One problem with trying to get at the facts about language is that everyone speaks a
language and thus everyone is a self-appointed expert. For example, everyone knows
that English is getting worse and worse, especially in the mouths of worthless young
people who probably couldn’t speak proper English if they tried. At best many beliefs
about language are grounded in intellectual laziness or in unexamined ideologies. At
worst they could be the product of any one of a number of -isms: classism, racism,
sexism, etc. We will explore how such misperceptions arise and are perpetuated.
There are two ways in which we will seek to examine and perhaps debunk many
common (mis-)perceptions about language. The first is by a set of readings in which two
linguists explore, in an accessible way, popular misconceptions about language. We will
concentrate on English, but we will also consider other languages and LANGUAGE in the
abstract. The second way is by making relatively controlled observations about how
language is actually used: What are people actually saying and how are they saying it?
Do men speak differently from women? Do Portlanders have a distinct way of speaking?
Etc.
By the end of the course students should have a good idea about what language is, why
people believe what they do about language, and what the antidote is to many common
misconceptions (a knowledge of linguistics!).
Texts
Required
Bauer, Laurie, and Peter Trudgill, eds. 1998. Language Myths. New York: Penguin
Putnam, Inc. (Bauer and Trudgill 1998) 0140260234.
Crystal, David. 2003. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language (2nd ed.).
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Crystal 2003) 0521530334.
Recommended
Llamas, Carmen, Mullany, Louise, and Stockwell, Peter. 2006. The Routledge
Companion to Sociolinguistics: Routledge. ISBN: 9780415338509, ISBN-10:
0415338506 (Llamas et al. 2006 replaces Stockwell 2002)
Parkvall, Mikael. 2006. Limits of Language: Almost Everything You didn't Know You
didn't Know about Language and Languages. London: Battlebridge Publications.
(Parkvall 2006)
Pinker, Steven. 1994. The Language Instinct. New York: W. Morrow and Co.
Pullum, Geoffrey K. 1991. The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax and Other Irreverent
Essays on the Study of Language. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ordered
26 Jan 07. 0226685349.
Rickerson, E. M., and Hilton, Barry eds. 2006. The Five-Minute Linguist: Bite-sized
Essays on Language and Languages. London: Equinox Publishing. Ordered 26
Jan 07. 184553199X
Wardhaugh, Ronald. 1999. Proper English: Myths and Misunderstandings about
Language. Malden, MA and Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Ordered 26 Jan 07.