Undergraduate Language and Linguistics 2017-2018

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.

Language is central to our humanity. Language and society are inextricably linked. Language unites; language divides. This course will develop your understanding of the social nature of language, providing insight into, among other things, the relationship between gender and language, language death and the art of persuasion.

The English language spoken in different places and by different groups of people varies hugely and this variation is a perennial topic of interest whenever people from different backgrounds meet. This course will survey a range of varieties of English, both from across the British Isles and from around the world, and will explore how these varieties differ from each other as well as what unites them. In order to do this, we will consider the sounds of English, standard and non-standard word morphology, variation in sentence structure and differences in lexical choice.

This course provides a general introduction to theories and approaches in first and second language acquisition and introduces students to research in the field. In particular, the course provides students with an understanding of Universal Grammar (UG), behaviourism, interactionism, and frequency-based perspectives of language acquisition. Internal and external factors that influence the course of first and second language development are explored.

This course utilises a flipped classroom model, which means that students get first exposure to new material outside of class (via lecture videos and reading) and use class time to do the harder work of assimilating the knowledge.

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.

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.

This course enables students to apply skills of close linguistic analysis to a range of literary texts and genres. Students will explore the ways in which different aspects of linguistic structure shape and contribute to readers' interpretations of texts. The core structural elements of phonology, morphology and syntax will be covered; each week, students will discuss a particular literary text, putting into practice the skills of stylistic analysis gained on the course up to that point. The course will cover both canonical "Literary" texts and other forms of writing.

We all string words together without thinking, but how does this process actually work? What makes the difference between a meaningful phrase and word salad? In this course we will explore the structure and meaning of sentences through the study of syntax and semantics. Students will gain tools to describe and analyse sentences in unexpected ways, drawing on a mixture of their own insights and data from a variety of languages to get to grips with the mechanisms that allow us to go beyond single-word utterances and communicate complex messages.

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.

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.

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!