Linguistics

This course equips students with the key theoretical and practical concepts of language policy and language planning. It familiarizes students with the processes by which languages are promoted or discouraged, e.g. by governments, and what impacts such choices have in areas such as education, minority languages, community empowerment, linguistic human rights, access to health, and nation building.

This course offers an introduction to lexicology, including definitions, the difference between lexicology and semantics, common and specialized vocabularies (e.g., folklore, scientific), and the analysis of relevant aspects of the Spanish lexicon. This course is facilitated through review and group discussion of these topics as well as completion of tasks and analysis exercises.

This course continues to cover methods of teaching English as a second language, theory and methods for foreign language instruction, and language instruction approaches and techniques. It focuses on advanced task design for instruction, integration of information and communication technologies to task design; and integration of individual skills to instruction.

This course offers a study of Latin rhetoric and stylistics. Topics include: rhetoric in Rome; genres or types of discourse; construction of discourse; parts of speech; stylistics.

In the wake of the logical revolution at the end of the 19th century, a number of philosophers well-versed in formal logic turned their attention to the project of understanding human languages, not just logical ones. Others argued for a different approach, claiming that the tools of logic are either insufficient or just the wrong sort of thing to help us understand the nuances of human language use. This course introduces students to these two broad strands of philosophical thinking about language. Students cover how each strand arose, developed, and eventually intertwined with the other. Then, drawing on the tools of both, students study a range of interesting linguistic phenomena—from foundational notions like meaning and communication to more complex and recalcitrant notions like slurring and silencing.