Wendy Bowcher, Professor, Tokyo Gakugei University
3 Credits
Pass / Fail

Description:

This course will cover the following areas: overview of social class, gender, age, ethnicity, and race as factors affecting language performance and acquisition. An introduction to issues in cross-cultural pragmatics and research on politeness./p>

Pre-course Assignment:

There are two important pre-requisites. If any students cannot fulfill these pre-requisites, then they should not register for this course.

1. All registered students must read and discuss before the first class meets the following books in the order below:

• Read all of Wardhaugh.
• Read Wolfson up through Chap 9, with Chaps 10ff optional (Chaps 4-7 are particularly important).
• Read in McKay & Hornberger:
• Chap 3 - Kachru and Nelson "World Englishes";
• Chap 7 - Freeman & McElhinny "Language and Gender";
• Chap 10 - Chick, "Intercultural Communication";
• Chap 12 - Cohen, "Speech Acts";
• Chap 13 - McKay, "Literacy and Literacies"}.
• Read all of Tannen.

Professor Bowcher has requested that students should not consider registering for this course unless they can and do read these texts. If you are unable to read these books after registering, please drop the course before the first session. Please start this reading soon.

2. To be able to fulfill this heavy reading requirement all registered students must meet for a total of 6 hours prior to the course start to read and discuss this pre-reading assignment. To facilitate this requirement the TC Office will send a list of the names and contact details of all those who have registered to their classmates. The registered students will be required to meet with each other in self-organised study groups for a total of 6 hours in the weeks prior to the starting date of the course, and to discuss the concepts and issues raised by the text.

To organise your meeting times, please contact the TC Office to reserve a room at TC either on Saturdays 1-8pm, or on Sundays 10-5pm, or even during the week in the evening. We will record those students who are meeting for the attendance requirement. In the week prior to the commencement of the course, those students who have not been able to meet this pre-course reading/discussion requirement will be asked to complete a DROP form.

Please note that this is an intensive course run over three weekends. Full attendance is a requirement.

Textbooks:

• Wardhaugh, (1998) An Introduction. to Sociolinguistics, 3rd ed. Blackwell Oxford: and Malden Mass.
• McKay, Sandra & Hornberger, Nancy (1997) Sociolinguistics and Language Teaching, CUP.
• Labov, The Study of Non-Standard English. (photocopy available from the TC office)
• Tannen, (1984) Conversational Style: Analyzing Talk Among Friends, Ablex, Norwood, NJ,
  
• Wolfson, N. Perspectives: Sociolinguistics and TESOL. Newbury House/Heinle and Heinle.

References

(reserved in TC Library):

• Schiffrin, Deborah. (1994) Approaches to Discourse. Cambridge: Blackwell.
• Wardhaugh, R. (1986) Introduction to Sociolinguistics, (2nd ed.), Cambridge: Blackwell
• Tannen, D. You Just Don't Understand. Morrow.
• Levinson, S. C. (1983), Pragmatics, UK: CUP.
• Fasold, R. (1984) The Sociolinguistics of Society, Blackwell.
• Fasold, R. (1990) The Sociolinguistics of Language, Blackwell.
• Gass, Madden, Preston, & Selinker. (1989) Multilingual Matters:
• Variation in Second Language Acquisition I: Discourse and Pragmatics
• Variation in Second Language Acquisition II: Psycholinguistics
• Heath, Shirley Brich. (1994) Ways with words.
• Chaika, Elaine (1994) Language: the social mirror. Heinle and Heinle.