VL Sociolinguistics SoSe 20

Dear students,

welcome to the lecture Sociolinguistics. As you are all aware, this summer semester will be a bit different, and lectures will only start from May 05. At this point, we do not yet know whether the lecture will take place on-site at Saarland University or whether we will have virtual sessions, but the plan is to get started with the first topic on May 05 regardless. If we are still prevented from on-site lectures, you will receive the first topics as virtual lecture modules uploaded on the respective lecture days – luckily, the lecture format is quite suitable for that, and that way you can work on the respective topics in your own time once they are uploaded. We will try to provide yo with some interactive features and perhaps some virtual plenaries, if the situation does not change. We are also working on a small intro so you see who will be behind all these slides...

What does this mean for you now? At the moment, you do not have to prepare anything; we will upload some materials such as the syllabus and the intro lecture, as well as some select reading materials. There are several excellent introductory textbooks to sociolinguistics, but we do not recommend that you read one at this point. Rather, we would like you to approach the discipline without preconceptions or a particular research angle.

The lecture will end with an exam at the end of the semester (currently planned for Tuesday, July 21, at the usual lecture time). All materials you need to pass the exam will be available on Moodle.

We are looking forward to the lecture and will see you on May 05 (one way or the other),

All best,

Stefan Diemer & Marie-Louise Brunner

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VL Sociolinguistics (SoSe 20) - Preliminary Syllabus

This lecture offers a general introduction to the discipline of sociolinguistics, with an overview of theory, methods, representatives and research. Extensive examples will illustrate sociolinguistic variables and their realizations in a language context. We will also look at sociolinguistic variation in historical and diachronic settings and discuss new approaches such as corpus-based and web-based research. A wide range of settings will be discussed, including professional communication, social media, World Englishes, English as a Foreign Language, and Lingua Franca contexts. The lecture serves as an introduction to various possible research directions and careers in English linguistics. Lecturer contact: s.diemer@mx.uni-saarland.de.

Topic 1: Introduction: SL in an interconnected world (May 05)

Topic 2: Linguistic variation (May 12)

Topic 3: Motivation of change (May 19)

Topic 4: Developmental and multilingual SL (May 26)

Topic 5: Ethnography of communication (May 26)

Topic 6: Interactional SL (June 02)

Guest Lecture: Critical Discourse Analysis and SL (Massimiliano Demata) (June 09)

Topic 7: Conversation and politeness (June 16)

Topic 8: Variables and realization (June 23)

Topic 9: Gender (June 23)

Topic 10: The corpus approach: SL and data (June 30)

Topic 11: The cognitive approach to SL (July 07)

Topic 12: World English: SL and the future of English (July 14)

Lecture summary and exam prep (July 14)

Exam (July 21)