e-mail: ajaffe@ocean.st.usm.edu 
phone: 266-6193 Anthro. Dept. phone: 266-4306 
Office hours: Tues. 9-11:00 at Water Tower Place Bldg. A; M-W 2-3:00 CH 311 and by appointment. 
 
This course is an introduction to the varied and complex relationships between language, society and culture. In the first part of the course we will examine the structural properties of language. This formal study of language constitutes a descriptive and conceptual tool box for the rest of the course, in which we will look at the way that formal properties of language 1) reflect social structure and cultural categories and 2) shape perceptions, attitudes and behaviors and 3) are used by social actors to make meanings and constitute the social world. We will also study the central symbolic role that language plays in the experience and ideology of identity, as well as how language is used and implicated in power relationships. By the end of the course, you will have learned some analytical strategies for evaluating communicative behavior, and you will have been exposed to a wide range of examples of the cultural and social importance of language use. 

 Required Texts: 
Bonvillian, Nancy Language, Culture and Communication (text) 
Philips, Susan The Invisible Culture: Communication in Classroom and Community on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation 
Coles, Robert The Call of Stories 

All other required readings will be placed on reserve in the library. Please be sure to photocopy them well in advance; I will not be sympathetic to the excuse that the reading was not available the night before it was due. 

Grading and Standards 
Midterm.........................................100 pts 
Final................................................100 pts 
Papers: 2 @ 100 pts. ea................200 pts 
Attendance and Participation.....50 pts 
Short projects/papers in class....50 pts 
TOTAL..........................................500 pts 

450-500 = A; 400-459 = B; 350-399 = C; 300-349 = D; 299> =F 

Exams will be short answer. Makeup exams will be essays, and will only be scheduled in response to a dire, documented emergency that you tell me about no later than a day after the missed exam. When you can predict an excused absence (varsity sports, jury duty etc. etc.) you must take the test ahead of schedule. Give me plenty of notice. 

 Papers are to be typed, double-spaced and stapled. If your paper grade is below a B, you may improve your grade on papers by rewriting (and making substantial revisions). Rewrites must be turned in one week after the paper has been returned to you. 
I will deduct 10 points (one letter grade) for each day a paper is late. 

Please note that your attendance and participation are weighted heavily; you can gain or lose an entire letter grade from this category. Participation hinges on doing the readings before you come to class. If you show up every day and do the readings, you will get all 50 points. Absences and lack of preparation will count against you. 
 

Schedule
Week 1:	TOPIC: Language Structure and Language Development
M 1/13  W 1/15	Readings: Ch. 2; Ch 9 section on "Speech Sounds"
F 1/17	Phonetics
Week 2:
M 1/20	Phonology (section in Ch. 2)
W 1/22	Morphology (section in Ch. 2) and Ch. 9 sections "Morphological Development" and "Growth in Vocabulary"
F 1/24	Syntax (section in Ch. 2) and Ch. 9 sections: "One Word Utterances," "Two-Word Utterances," "Syntactic Development"
Week 3:
M 1/27	Semantics
	TOPIC: LANGUAGE SOCIALIZATION
W 1/29	Ch. 9, section on Instructional Strategies  CH 10: Acquisition of Communicative Competence
F 1/31	Video
Week 4:
M 2/3	Ochs and Schieffelin, "Language Acquisition and Socialization: Three Developmental Stories"  Miller, "Teasing as Language Socialization and Verbal Play in A White Working Class Community"
	TOPIC: LANGUAGE AND CULTURAL MEANING
W 2/5	Ch. 3, pp. 48-53  Hoijer, "The Sapir Whorf Hypothesis"
F 2/7	Tan, "The Language of Discretion"
Week 5:	Labels, Categories and their Social Consequences
M 2/10	Ch. 3, pp. 53-65  Callen, "AIDS: the Linguistic Battlefield"  handout: "The Moral Status of Mice"  Hamilton et. al., "Jury Instructions Worded in the Masculine Generic"
W 2/12	cont. (video)
F 2/14	Metaphor: Ch. 3, pp. 65-end of chapter  Nelson, "Metaphor and the Media"
Week 6
M 2/17	Schoen, excerpt from The Reflexive Practitioner
	TOPIC: ETHNOGRAPHY OF COMMUNICATION
W 2/19	Ch. 4
F 1/21	Basso, "To Give Up on Words: Silence in Apache Culture"
Week 7
M 2/24	Evans-Pritchard, "Nuer Modes of Address"  Hurwitz, "Uncommon Forms of Address: a Business Example"
W 2/26	Duranti, "Language in Context and Language as Context: The Samoan Respect Vocabulary"
F 2/28	Conversation Ch. 5: Communicative Interactions
Week 8
M 3/3	Ch. 13: Institutional Settings
W 3/5	Tannen, "Who's Interrupting?"
F 3/7	*****MIDTERM*****
	********************SPRING BREAK*******************************
	TOPIC: NARRATIVE
Week 9
M 3/17	Coles, The Call of Stories
W 3/19	Treichler et. al. "Problems and Problems: Power Relations in a Medical Encounter"
F 3/21	Johnstone, "Community and Contest: Midwestern Men and Women Creating Their Worlds in Conversational Storytelling."  or  Silberstein, "Ideology as Process: Gender Ideology in Courtship Narratives"
	TOPIC: SOCIETAL SEGMENTATION
Week 10
M 3/24	Ch. 6
W 3/26	Class/Region   McDavid, "Postvocalic -r in South Carolina: a Social Analysis"  Nichols, "Networks and Hierarchies"
F 3/28:	Holiday--Good Friday
Week 11
M 3/31	Race  Spears, "Black American English"  Video: "Black on White"
W 4/2	Jordan, "Nobody Mean More to Me Than You and the Future Life of Willie Jordan"  Jones, "What's Wrong With Black English?"
F 4/4	Ebonics  Christensen: TBA
Week 12
M 4/7	Gender Ch. 7  W 4/9 Eckert, "The Whole Woman: Sex and Gender Differences in Variation"
F 4/11	Ch. 8
Week 13	TOPIC: MULTILINGUAL CONTEXTS
M 4/14	Ch. 11: Multilingual Nations
W 4/16	Video "Hablas Ingles?"
F 4/18	Discussion
Week 14
M 4/21	Philips, The Invisible Culture
W 4/23	cont.
F 4/25	Heath, "What No Bedtime Story Means: Narrative Skills at Home and School"
Week 15
M 4/28	Ch. 12: Bilingual Communities
W 4/30	Heller, "Ethnic Relations and Language Use in Montreal"
F 5/2	Hill, "Women's Speech in Modern Mexicano"  or  Spedding "Open Castilian, Closed Aymara"
Week 16
M 5/5	Stafford, "Language and Identity: Haitians in New York City"
W 5/7	Jaffe, "Orthography and Ideology: the Second Annual Corsican Spelling Contest"
F 5/9	Summary

  Each syllabi the intellectual property of the author.