230560 What Accents of English Reveal about Social Status: Studies in Sociolinguistics (S) (SoSe 2008)

"Hi, dude, what's up?", "Hi, how are you?", "Good morning. May I help you?" Three greetings, all of them can be uttered by the same person, but in different communities. In the class "What Accents of English Reveal about a Social Status: Studies in Sociolinguistics" we will investigate what the choice of words reveals about the social settings. We will extend this to accents used by different groups and investigate.

This class introduces ideas from the area of socio-linguistics. The methods will be introduced and the goals of sociolinguistics will be discussed. Students participating in this class must have a basic linguistic knowledge on the level of a finished BM 2, the class "Introduction to Applied Linguistics" is recommended.

At the end of this class there will be a mandatory final exam for participants. Additionally students will have to demonstrate their active participation by short presentations of group projects.