Studying Language in Vivo

Course title: Studying Language in Vivo

Instructor: Mira Bergelson

Course description:  

Language, as seen by modern linguistic approaches, is a multifaceted object belonging to the three realms of human existence: biological, psychological, and social. If we want to understand how it functions, we need to view it not as object, but as an activity. The activity that brings together all three constituents is communication. The central concept in studying communication is “context”, as most if not all features of the communication process are determined by  various contexts in which it occurs.   In order to construct and reconstruct meanings as it happens in communication, in order to be able to describe the language as means of this communication process, we need to be able to fill out all the contextual gaps: who, when, where, why or what for, and how.

In this course we will answer these questions for two specific case studies that demonstrate various directions of linguistic research.  One is a project of making a dictionary of an endangered language dialect:  Alaskan Russian. It is based on fieldwork and demonstrates how culture and physical context (history of the region) shape linguistic form. The other case will deal with ‘shades in conversation’ created by participants’ intentions and their relations towards each other and how it is expressed by the use of discourse markers of pragmatic control. 

The course can be seen as an ‘alternative introduction to linguistic studies’ and aims at providing information on both linguistic data and methods.

Requirements: Motivation to learn about how things function, intermediate knowledge of English

Course activities:  Lectures, individual or group research projects, selected readings, presentations of research project findings.

Evaluation: participation in the course activities (ongoing), analytical summary of the assigned readings, presentation of the research project

Course structure: The course consists of three logical parts:  Introduction (lectures), Project #1 (lectures and seminars), Project #2 (lectures and seminars)

Literature:  Scollon, R. and Scollon, S. B. K. (2001). Intercultural communication : a discourse approach. Malden, Mass., Blackwell Publishers.(selected chapters)

1. What is a Discourse Approach

2. How, When, and Where to Do Things with Language

3. Interpersonal Politeness and Power

4. Conversational Inference: Interpretation in Spoken Discourse

5. Topic and Face: Inductive and Deductive Patterns in Discourse

6. Ideologies of Discourse

7. What is Culture? Intercultural Communication and Stereotyping.

8. Using a Discourse Approach to Intercultural Communication