"Language and Identity: Defend an Informed Opinion With Linguistics"

This 6-session course is on the intersection of language and identity. The main topics include personal and cultural identity, stereotyping, variation and codeswitching, bilingualism, and English-only movements. 

Week 1, Day 1:
The first class will consist of an introduction and discussion of language and its intersection with personal and cultural identity. We will learn some basic linguistic terminology and then apply them to understanding how language shapes our identity at both the personal and cultural levels.

Week 1, Day 2:
The second class will consist of a discussion of cultural stereotyping, including linguistic discrimination, and linguistic profiling. We will see examples of such stereotyping toward groups of speakers of particular languages as well as stereotyping within English varieties.

Week 2, Day 1
The third class will examine how we make connections with others through language and we will learn the concepts of language variation, codeswitching, and style-shifting to explain those interactions.

Week 2, Day 2
The fourth class will examine language as a cultural and national identifier. We will also observe how, in our global society, we tend to rank cultures and how they derive status and power from such attitudes and opinions.

Week 3, Day 1
The fifth class will be a series of case studies on the status of non-native English speakers in the United States. We will review some historical language cases including Cherokee and German, and then we will look at more contemporary cases in Southern California and New York.

Week 3, Day 2
The final class will consist of students defending a position regarding language policy topics such as English-only policies and bilingualism policies.