Languages vary in many ways, yet the minds of speakers are similar.
The course will begin with a short, general introduction to the study of language. The words people use affect and reflect the way they think. We'll consider studies of word use in areas such as war, politics, minority groups, by and about women. At the level of structure, we will study the 'Whorfian' hypothesis, which says in its strongest form that the structure of a language determines the way speakers think. There are interesting studies which compare speakers of English and languages with radically different structures.