Language Culture Society In Southeast Asia

Using materials from Mainland and Island Southeast Asia, the course will have two main themes:

Language-external: (a) The region's array of languages examined historically and sociolinguistically. (b) The use of linguistic data in uncovering the region's social and cultural history. (c) Language-change and language-loss in the face of present-day political pressures. (d) Language-engineering in the region's nation-states.

Language-internal: (a) Critical discussion of the various theoretical approaches to language-and-culture issues, both old and new, especially as presented in the literature of linguistic anthropology. (b) Discussion of the extent to which the organisation (phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics) of languages relates to their cultural and social contexts in which they are spoken.