Language and Society

This course consists in an overview of some major links between linguistics and other social sciences, in particular sociology and anthropology. Students will discover, or deepen their knowledge of some major theories, methods, frameworks, approaches and concepts at the crossroads of these fields.

The course will review elements from a variety of research fields, among which interactional sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, applied linguistics, linguistic landscape studies, (political) discourse analysis, including critical approaches.

Major concepts, that are often transversal to different research fields, such as context, indexicality, repertoires, or (trans)languaging, will be explained.

The course will introduce students to different methods and tools, such as qualitative research methods in the social sciences, linguistic ethnography and multimodality. The course will also give a sense of the variety of corpus data that can be used in research on language and society, such as political yard signs in US presidential campaigns, street graffiti in Phoenix (Arizona), streetwise interactions in South Africa, or Multicultural London English in TikTok videos. The course will include the reading and discussion of academic papers, as well as invite students to envisage applications of the approaches covered in the course to new corpora.

-        Connaître et comprendre les principales approches et cadres théoriques du thème étudié
-        Développer ses compétences méthodologiques en recherche qualitative à l’interface de la linguistique et des sciences sociales
-        Savoir appliquer des outils théoriques et méthodologiques à un corpus de données
-        Se familiariser avec la lecture d’écrits académiques et scientifiques en anglais

Session 1 contrôle continu
-        Une note d’oral (participation et/ou présentations en classe) 40%
-        Une épreuve sur table (devoir final en classe : questions de cours et/ou application des outils théoriques et méthodologiques vus en cours) 60%

Session 1 contrôle dérogatoire
-        Une épreuve sur table de 2h (questions de cours et/ou application des outils théoriques et méthodologiques vus en cours)

Session 2 
Epreuve orale sans temps de préparation

Anglais C1, Français B2

Blommaert, J. (2010). The Sociolinguistics of Globalization. Cambridge University Press. 
Duranti, A. and C. Goodwin (Eds.) (1992). Rethinking Context: Language as an Interactive Phenomenon. Cambridge University Press.
García, O., N. Flores, M. Spotti (Eds.). (2021). The Oxford Handbook of Language and Society. 
Oxford University Press.
Gorter, D., E. Shohamy (Eds.). (2009). Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the Scenery. Routledge.
Show, F., S. Copland S and J. Snell (Eds). (2015). Linguistic Ethnography: Interdisciplinary Explorations. Palgrave Macmillan.