239805 Investigating Language Variation (S) (SoSe 2012)

This hands-on seminar gives you an idea of how linguistic research is carried out. Its aim is to help you gain relevant information from corpus based researches as well as from your own case studies. In the beginning we will identify different categories of linguistic variation, discuss how these could be described, where to find samples, and strategies of comparison.

In the course of the seminar every student is going to prepare and introduce examples of variation in English. These examples can come from different dialects of British or American English, New Englishes, English as lingua franca, learner language, and English for Specific Purposes.

Students who want to do their ‘Praxisstudien’ (PM10) in this seminar can do so in the form of case studies.

The seminar is primarily concerned with morphosyntactic variation. Sociolinguistic aspects can only be covered in this context. Identity construction, subculture language etc. can be investigated, but the focus is to be put on the grammatical properties of the particular varieties.
The investigation of language variation is closely related to error analysis, thus the seminar might also be interesting for future English teachers.

Requirements for participation, required level

BaAngBM2 completed!

All students who take this class for PM10/SRM should have completed PM1 or PM2.

IMPORTANT NOTICE FOR FUTURE TEACHERS: This is not a didactics course. There will be no ZfL registered school internships.

Bibliography

Dorian, N.C. (2010): "Investigating Variation: The Effects of Social Organization and Social Setting." Oxford: OUP.

Gramley, S., Pätzold, K.-M. (2004): "A Survey of Modern English." 2nd ed., Abingdon: Routledge.

Kortmann, B. (ed.) (2004): "Handbook of the Varieties of English: Morphology and Syntax." Berlin: Mouton DeGruyter.