Language in London - An Introduction to Sociolinguistics UCL

Overview

The Language in London - An Introduction to Sociolinguistics course from UCL Summer School takes a survey approach, ensuring that the breadth of sociolinguistic scholarship is explored.

The module is research driven and you will be exposed to the range of methodologies used in the discipline. You will have the chance to carry out a project on dialectology and language attitudes within class sessions, and you will also take a field trip to photograph the linguistic landscape in Brick Lane, Chinatown and Camden.

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students will have:

• Identified the main social factors which influence how people use language and describe how factors such as gender and ethnicity interact with language use.

• Become able to critically review and discuss academic articles in the field of sociolinguistics. They will be able to paraphrase the main arguments of key writings and give examples of the phenomena explored beyond those provided in the texts.

• Applied aspects of sociolinguistic theory to their own lived experience as language users and to unfamiliar data.

• Planned and designed a small-scale study on one aspect of sociolinguistics and made predictions on what such a study might find.

• Assessed the merits of different research designs and evaluated the feasibility of research proposals.