Undergraduate Language and Linguistics 2014-2015

This course opens up new ways for students to think about language by introducing them to the fundamentals of English linguistics. Students will learn how to identify and analyse the major "building blocks" of language in phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. Examples for illustration and discussion will be drawn from varieties of English spoken in the British Isles and worldwide, with lectures and tutorials geared to providing students with an active vocabulary with which to discuss language, and essential tools with which to analyse its structure and function.

This course will interest anyone wanting to learn about language use. Moving beyond strict notions of structure, it explores communication in practice, examining how language works in different contexts and cultures. We will engage in careful study of various means of communication, from conversations to social networking and advertising, as well as broader questions of social identity factors that influence and interact with language. The course also addresses selected contemporary social issues that are principally or partly communicative in nature, challenging common misconceptions, and giving students an understanding of the contribution that awareness of language can make to numerous disciplines.

Meaning is at heart of our existence. The subtlety by which we express ideas so that our listeners can pick up meanings which are ‘understood’, but unsaid, takes our abilities far beyond what even the most powerful and rapid computers can achieve.

This course will demonstrate how we construct and interpret meaning, both as individuals and in groups. Consideration will also be given to how meaning changes across time (condescension was once a good thing). We will also look at how dictionaries and thesauri are researched and edited, before introducing pragmatics, the study of meaning above the word.

Things that make you go “mmmm”… When is an “N” not an “N”? Is the letter “L” always pronounced the same way? Why do some people pronounce all the “R”s in words, while others seem to drop some of them? We’ve all heard people with a range of different accents. But have you stopped to think how the accents differ? This course will extend your knowledge of articulatory phonetics: the processes by which speech sounds are produced and introduce you to phonological theory to explain which differences are significant for conveying differences in meaning.

Although we often see words as basic units of meaning, many actually consist of smaller subcomponents. These are not thrown together at random, but combine systematically to create meaning. For instance, we can add the English prefix 'un-' to adjectives (as in 'unhappy'), but not nouns (as in *'undog'). Likewise, words are organised into sentences according to the grammatical rules of a specific language: 'happy dogs eat biscuits' is acceptable in English, but 'dogs happy biscuits eat' is not. This course examines how words and sentences are constructed, giving students analytical and conceptual tools to explore these components of language.

Students will be introduced to a range of conceptions and perspectives on discourse, drawn from disciplines such as linguistics, social psychology, sociology, and communication studies. They will examine what the study of discourse reveals about the nature of language, social interaction, power relations, and the construction of meaning. They will learn the basic principles of analytical methods for discourse analysis, including:

• text linguistics
• narrative analysis
• conversation analysis
• critical discourse analysis

Students will also gain practical experience in applying these approaches to a variety of discourses, including conversations, interviews, the media, academic writing, literary texts, and advertisements.

At pre-honours, you have focused on articulatory phonetics, gaining an understanding of how speech sounds are produced in the vocal tract. LN3002 links this knowledge to an investigation of acoustic phonetics: the analysis of soundwaves in order to identify different phonetic features. Each week there is a seminar to introduce phonetic theory, followed by a practical in which you will learn how to use the freely available Praat software to conduct acoustic analysis of your own voice before extending this to compare different voices. Assessment involves a combination of theoretical and practical work.

How children and adults learn language has been the topic of much debate within linguistics. This course will focus on some of the main theories of language learning and introduce students to research in first and second language acquisition. It will answer questions such as: when do children first start learning language? How do they go from babbling to one word sentences to the full complexity of adult grammar in a span of merely a few years? How do the brains of people who learn two languages simultaneously differ from those who learn a second language later on in life?

All languages are in a perpetual state of flux. This flux – a combination of variation and change – is socially meaningful. Gender, ethnicity, age, social background, perhaps even sexuality, affect how you speak. From this flux comes a never-ending cycle of linguistic change, which is affected by social factors.

This course provides an understanding of Sociolinguistics – the study of social effects on language use – and Historical Linguistics – the study of how language changes over time. Besides developing a grounding in the theory and methodology of these interconnected subjects, you will engage in hands-on analysis of data.

This course gives students the essential tools for conducting research in linguistics. Working with examples of published articles, we will cover philosophical frameworks underpinning different research approaches, effective strategies for reading to conduct a literature review, and the design and implementation of research projects. We will also look at how to frame testable hypotheses, ethical constraints and considerations in linguistic research, and different approaches to collecting data. Particular attention will be given to comparing qualitative approaches, such as participant observation and ethnographic methods, and quantitative approaches, such as structured questionnaires and variationist sociolinguistic methods, including elementary statistical analysis. 

What language variety we use, what language variety we are allowed to use, affects our position in society. While democracy theoretically guarantees equality, social elites use language to maintain their position in society. Anyone using a rural dialect will at best be treated with condescension; anyone using an urban dialect may be seen as threatening. That said, empowering people to write in their own language helps speakers join a digital world beyond their immediate experience. This course is concerned with various macrosociolinguistic topics: language policy and planning; language and dialect; language and the nation state; language maintenance and language shift.

Linguistic contact is everywhere and eternal. English lexis is a particularly good example of this: less than half of the vocabulary of the present-day language is of native origin. But examples can be found elsewhere which are even more striking. Michif, for instance, has French noun morphology but Cree verb morphology. Here in northern Scotland, the pronunciation of the first consonant in the local equivalent of ‘what’ – fit – probably came about under Gaelic influence. This course will provide students with the theoretical and methodological insights which underlie the study of linguistic contact.

If you took LN3002 Phonetics, you developed skills in acoustic phonetic analysis. The rapidly developing field of Sociophonetics applies these techniques to address some profound questions about the links between phonetic variation and change and the structure of society. Through a combination of reading recent research papers and conducting focused practical work, we will investigate how speaker’s construction of their identities in terms of gender, place and social class is connected to their use of specific phonetic variants. We’ll also consider perception: find out how the presence of a toy kangaroo can make someone sound more Australian!

Once you have successfully completed three years of university-level study of Linguistics, this course allows you to develop and carry out an independent piece of research on a topic of your choice. It might be that a particular taught course has inspired you to explore a topic in more depth; your own reading might have prompted you to wonder about a particular question. You will be supervised by a member of the department who will be happy to give advice and support as you complete your dissertation of 7000-8000 words.

The course explores a variety of professional communities of practice from the point of view of language use. Topics discussed include:

• Language and Law
• Language and Law Enforcement
• Language and Health Care
• Doctor-Patient Interaction
• Talking Therapies
• Organisational Communication Talk and Organisational Interaction
• Structure of Organisational Communications
• Persuasive Discourse (Advertising, etc.).

Students will apply a variety of linguistic methods to reveal the relationship between language, communicative practice and professional activities, in order to increase their understanding of language and enhancing professional practice.