Linguistics

This course introduces the scientific study of language, its structure, functions, and its connections to human psychology and biology. It explores the fundamental components of language and examines how linguistic data can be analyzed and interpreted through a scientific lens. It draws on a range of real-world materials, popular culture, digital communication, and more, to debunk common myths and deepen the understanding of how language works.

This course examines the language of, about, and surrounding food. It explores the role of food (and its discursive enactment) in community-building, lifestyles, and the creation of social elites. Other topics include food performances (e.g., cooking and eating shows), dinner talk and socialization, and food and language in the public landscape. Special emphasis lies on the entanglements of language, food, and the digital realm.

The course covers topics including language, gender, and sexuality; language, politics, and ideology; language and social identity (age, gender, class, region); language contact; and multilingualism. Students gain an overview of foundational and contemporary theoretical and methodological developments in the field.

This course explores the relationship between language and cognition as well as the role of language in human cognition. Topics include: linguistic productivity; linguistic relativism and determinism; the relationship between language and conceptual systems (semantic memory, schemas, and scripts); the relationship between language and intentional systems and its interface with pragmatics.

This course examines the linguistic products of contact between English and other languages, in contexts of colonization and/or globalization. These different "Englishes" can include English creoles, substrate-influenced or "L" Englishes, or dense code-mixing with English. Sometimes these Englishes co-occur, and in addition there are L1 varieties of English which are retained in educational and or formal settings. Students explore the structure of these Englishes; the circumstances that have led to their formation, ideologies of the new varieties and attitudes towards them.

This course examines the relationship between language and cognition, focusing on how linguistic structures shape and reflect cognitive processes. Topics include the role of language in human thought, linguistic productivity, and the debates surrounding linguistic relativism and determinism. The course explores how language interacts with conceptual systems such as semantic memory, schemas, and scripts, as well as its connection to intentional systems through its interface with pragmatics. Major linguistic paradigms are considered to highlight their perspectives on how language and cognition influence one another.

This course offers an overview of the main questions that drive current reflection in the area of ​​the relationships between the brain, cognitive processes, and language. Students learn to distinguish the areas of study within Psycholinguistics, particularly those related to language comprehension and production, as well as its acquisition.

This course introduces students to the basics of Articulatory and Acoustic Phonetics, with a focus on American English and Korean sounds. The course enhances understanding of the fundamental articulatory principles for consonants and vowels. Additionally, students learn to use the speech analysis software 'Praat' to explore the acoustic properties of sounds. 

Students first examine Articulatory Phonetics - The articulatory mechanisms of human speech; The articulatory principles of consonants and vowels; and Allophones and narrow transcription. The second half of the course covers Acoustic Phonetics - The theoretical background for acoustic measurements of human speech and their physical mechanisms - and includes laboratory (experimental) sessions analyzing the acoustic properties of English and Korean vowels and consonants. 

Topics in Linguistics 1 is a topical course in which the subject of inquiry may change from term to term. Each offering of this course focuses in-depth on a specific area of linguistics, and students should expect the course to be comprehensive and advanced.  

The course topic for Fall 2025 is Psycholinguistics. This offering of the course focuses on the cognitive processes involved in language acquisition, production, and comprehension. Students explore how language is processed at various levels, including speech perception, word and sentence processing, and discourse understanding. The course also examines the neurological and psychological foundations of language, as well as the development of language in early childhood and the processing of bilingualism and sign language. By engaging with theoretical models and experimental findings, students gain insight into how language behavior illuminates our understanding of the mind and brain. 

Students are encouraged to have a basic understanding of at least three core areas within theoretical linguistics, such as phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. This course is not recommended for students with little or no background in theoretical linguistics.