A WorLD In Motion The Sociolinguistics Of Globalization

AY2015/2016 Semester 2

`A Wor(l)d in Motion: the sociolinguistics of globalization? is an advanced course aimed at reexamining the understanding of human communication in the age of globalization. As a research agenda, the sociolinguistics of globalization represents a relatively new, but rapidly growing and vibrant interdisciplinary approach to the place and role of language in the contemporary flows of people, capital, ideas, world views, cultural artefacts and representations. Change, mobility and flux have come to characterize contemporary social life and social imagination, and this course will be a forum for students to engage with the relevant readings that grapple with these issues from a sociolinguistic perspective. Throughout the course, we will be examining conditions and themes that have come to occupy a prominent place in the sociolinguistic research program. We will identify what new theoretical and methodological notions we need to add to our `traditional? sociolinguistic repertoire in order to scrutinize communication and emergent regimes of language in the contexts of superdiversity, spatial and symbolic mobility, globalized economic markets, tourism, war and terrorism.