Language Society

This course surveys the interactions between language and other human social behaviors that distinguish individual speakers as belonging to a particular social or language community. You will examine the way language works in relation to communication and culture, interaction between language structure and social structure and social norms (sociolinguistics), the relationship between linguistic knowledge and cultural knowledge (anthropological linguistics), the interplay of language and the mind. Special case studies on the Chinese language and /or the language context in Singapore will be reviewed and discussed.