Who speaks “correctly”? Which languages are taught in schools? Who gets to be bilingual? In this course, we explore how language is used to construct and suppress identity, with a particular focus on the languages and cultures of what is now the United States. As we investigate the relationship between language and power across time and space, we will also make connections with our own life experiences and with current events. Topics covered include the intersections of race and ethnicity with migration, language policy, pseudoscience, media representation, and multilingualism.

This course fulfills the Race & Ethnicity requirement. As such, we focus on linguistic discrimination which is rooted in discrimination based on race and ethnicity. We demonstrate how language has been used to reinforce essentialized views of race, and how discrimination based on language can often be a proxy for discrimination based on race and ethnicity. We discuss how language has been a site of oppression at both the level of the individual and society, and make explicit the connections between individual-level processes and social structures, showing how interpersonal bigotry both reinforces and is reinforced by laws, policies, and other norms. This course is designed to help students make sense of the world that they are in by giving context for how we got here, while also encouraging us to imagine and co-create a better present and future.

Content note: This course deals with issues of language stigma, political correctness, and language as identity. As such, some of the material covered has the potential to make you (and/or the instructor) uncomfortable. We expect that everyone work together to foster a safe (and fun!) environment within which we can learn from one another.

Course Requirements:

Students will be asked to engage with readings (a mix of scholarly and popular press articles), discuss concepts and analyze examples in small-group discussions and activities in class, reflect on their learning via short writing assignments, situate their own experiences in the context of course topics (culminating in a Linguistic Autobiography), and to notice and contextualize examples of linguistic discrimination in their daily lives (culminating in a Language & Discrimination Project).

Intended Audience:

This course assumes no background in Linguistics or Anthropology, and all students are welcome to enroll.