Scholarly estimates consistently place the percentage of the world’s population able to communicate proficiently in more than one language over 50%. Yet multilingual competence is regularly treated as a secondary or even aberrant state requiring explanation and interpretation, while monolingualism is assumed as default despite its numerically inferior status. In this course, we will reverse this paradigm, and work to view monolingualism as a contingent output of an essentially multilingual human milieu. Perspectives will range from the sociolinguistic to the psycholinguistic to the realm of language ideology/policy, and our examination of individual and societal-level practices will address topics relating to language acquisition, language contact/isolation, code-switching, mono-/polylectalism and mono-/diglossia. Participation of multilingual and monolingual students in the seminar is welcomed.
Learning Outcomes:
1) Motivate and apply diverse theoretical approaches – sociolinguistic, psycholinguistic, and language-systemic – to the description and analysis of multi-/monolingualism.
2) Critically frame questions and evaluate findings that innovatively and conscientiously advance the state of understanding of mono-/multilingualism.
3) Intentionally articulate and approach your own positionality and agency with regard to these topics.
Delivery Method: Remotely accessible
Course Level: 2000-level
Credits: 4
M/Th 10:00AM - 11:50AM (Full-term)
Maximum Enrollment: 20
Course Frequency: Every 2-3 years
Categories: All courses , Cultural Studies and Languages , Remotely Accessible , Sociolinguistics
Tags: language , linguistics , sociolinguistics