The purpose of this assignment is for you to engage with course concepts with respect to language (I will attach readings). However, the nature of the assignment goes much deeper than that. You should exercise your critical thinking skills, in that you are expected to critically engage with the underlying theoretical concepts put forth in the course. Examples of important underlying concepts include but are not limited to things such as frames, performance, race, gender, ideology, mediation, inscripts, parallelism, and codeswitching. Language in its cultural specificity should be at the center of your assignment. This assignment asks you to put these sorts of concepts to work in analyzing a piece of real life discourse, or creating something that comments on language. Your overarching purpose in this assignment should be to test the concepts we have learned in analyzing something. Ask yourself, are the concepts effective in the ways that the authors we have read have defined them, or do they require re-defining? For instance, is Agars notion of frames helpful in explaining what you have before you, or does whatever you are participating in call for further stipulation of the concept? For all these reasons, your assignment will, at some point, make an argument about the way in which your data challenges or supports the theoretical concepts from the course. Make sure your thesis is easily identifiable, plausible, novel, sophisticated, insightful, and absolutely clear.
THE KEY, however, is to make sure you are being explicit about the involvement of course concepts.
Include a bibliography of the course references you used. Understand that more is not always better; Im judging the depth of your engagement (more on depth in a moment).
Please focus especially on engaging with the courses central theme in a way that is identifiable, plausible, novel, sophisticated, and clear. In addition, the texts you are calling on should be clearly pointed out, and it should be shown that you understand the concepts as they are articulated by authors and in class. Lastly,Explore course themes and concepts in an unexpected way, using well-executed techniques.
Remember that this is about language how it channels human behavior and what happens to us when we use language. Keep language and its associated course concepts at the very center of what you are thinking about.
Regarding the sources, like I mentioned, its more quality than quantity. I attached many documents that pertain to the course concepts that I mentioned. It is your job to figure out an idea for this assignment and utilize the sources. You are not expected to use all sources, just the ones that pertain to your argument and topic. (I would say minimum 3 sources? Whatever you’d like to be honest)
Let me know if you have any further questions.
