ANTH 203 - Language and Culture

4 Credit(s)

Gen Ed: SA & XC credit. Lab section required.
This course looks at language as a set of cultural practices. We will discuss the structure of language, language change, regional and social dialects, slang, gender and ethnicity. We will explore the function, nature and role of human language within cultural production, social institutions, and the construction of group and individual identities. The lab component will provide training in the collection and analysis of phonological, morphological, syntactic, semantic data from a variety of languages. Labs will include transcription of natural speech, comparative analysis of data to reconstruct proto forms, the analysis of gender influences on language, and the analysis of conversation and the effects of social attitudes on language use. Spring.