This course is a graduate level introduction to important concepts and principles in sociolinguistics to understand, analyze, and solve language related problems pertinent to your context. Sociolinguists are researchers generally interested in trying to understand and systematically investigate language as it is related to social life and the social landscape. Sociolinguists share the conviction that an understanding of language requires consideration of both the extralinguistic and the linguistic contexts in which language is produced, intended, and interpreted.

We will consider many of the topics that sociolinguists have studied, including variation, gender, style, attitudes, multilingualism, culture, communication, and the connections of these issues to ideologies about language. Throughout the course, we will be interested in several issues, such as: What assumptions does this researcher make about language and about the nature of society and culture? How does this work give us insight into the nature and structure of language? How might this work fit into a general theory of language? How does this work relate to the work of other researchers interested in similar questions? What are the aims and methods used for focusing on this topic? How can this research be applied to other disciplines such as education, rhetoric, sociology, psychology, communications, or to other professionals (e.g., teachers, doctors, lawyers, therapists, etc.)? The students will be guided to investigate sociolinguistic topics of their own choice and produce publishable papers.