The cultural basis of understanding and thinking, including why beliefs have force for us, how we reason about everyday dilemmas and solve everyday problems, and how cultural understandings structure narrative, metaphor, categories, and other aspects of language. Evidence for cross-cultural variation and cultural universals in human thought. This is a seminar on selected topics in language development. The question of gender and language is conceived and developed within the context of those linguistic theories that necessarily require a definition role of speaker and addresses in models of speech acts and sign production. Readings taken from a variety of disciplines that grapple with linguistic issues, including neurobiology, psychology, semiotics, feminist critical theory, philosophy of language, discourse analysis and general linguistic theory.
Linguistic data includes a representative selection of the world's languages.
Contrast and comparison of both theoretical approaches and language groups is required. This seminar introduces students to field-initiated research on sociolinguistic variation in English in order to provide an empirical foundation for examining major issues related to language variation and change. Collaborative and individual research projects are designed, and local fieldwork is carried out to gather appropriate data. The data are analyzed using current qualitative and quantitative methods in the study of language variation. Students regularly discuss the development of the research project in class and write a paper suitable for professional presentation.