In this course, students will be acquainted with two central concepts of sociolinguistics and pragmatics: the concept of a "linguistic situation" and the concept of a "communicative situation." The former relates language(s) to broader social factors in a given unit and touches upon a number of fields of sociolinguistic investigation (e.g., bi- and multilingualism, contact languages, language policy and language planning, language and culture, language attitudes, language and ethnicity/identity). In turn, the concept of a communicative situation applies to actual linguistic encounters. It is constituted by numerous interrelated variables, as, inter alia, the type of communicative situation, the social organizations, the location, and the participants.
3 credits, small research project
