Students will conduct a research project on a topic (one!) related to the real use of language in society. This project aims both to improve students’ research skills and to relate explicitly two important aspects of their academic study and profession (i.e., language and society).
Topics include but are not limited to the broad areas of:
o language variation (geographical, historical, socio-economic, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, etc.)
o language policy (in schools or elsewhere)
o language academies (often commercial in nature)
o the status of official languages (in any country or countries or U.S. states)
o the English-only movement
o pidgins and creoles
o language contact (e.g., Spanish in New York)
Write a paper on transliterating and the linguistic repertoire of multilingual speakers
o code-switching
o the effect of immigration on the language of a society
o the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
o Grice’s Cooperative Principle
o AAVE (or BEV) or other varieties of English
o speech acts
Each of these topics would need to be narrowed in order to reflect each student’s individual interest. Please check with the instructor to make sure that your individual topic is acceptable and manageable.
The primary sources of information come from library research. Students are responsible for finding suitable scholarly sources (Professional librarians can help. Introductory textbooks, with their references, can help.). Also possibly useful (though not required) for this project are direct data acquired through interviews of language speakers or audio (and video) recordings of speakers. Students may also (though this is not required) include mention of their own relevant experiences.
The paper must include citations and a bibliography of at least two scholarly entries (Note: An encyclopedia or dictionary does not count as a scholarly entry; if used, these would be additional). Use a standard academic (e.g., APA) format. The paper must be word-processed, double-spaced, with 12 (or equivalent) font, on plain white paper. Maximum length is 4 pages, including bibliography (which does not need to be on a separate page).
