ang617 - Language Variation and Change (Course overview)

Institute of English and American Studies

6 KP

Module components

Semester courses Wintersemester 2021/2022

Examination

Lecture

3.02.175 - V Research Methods in Linguistics
- Dr. Ilka Flöck, she/ her
Thursday: 14:00 - 15:00, weekly (from 21/10/21)

The lecture “Methods in Language Variation and Change” accompanies one of the linguistic seminars in ang617/ang618 and is meant for students registered for these courses to develop basic methodological skills in the topic areas of language variation and change. Unlike many other disciplines in the humanities, linguistics has a very empirical research tradition. To get the data needed for empirical research, there are various methods of data collection which all come with a number of limitations and advantages. In this course, we will introduce and evaluate different methods of data collection, making you familiar with the advantages and disadvantages of them all and discuss critically the suitability for your research questions. In the lecture, we will guide students to develop different methodological skills and competences, such as: - the ability to formulate a valid (and manageable) research question - the ability to choose the appropriate approach to answering this research question (i.e. e.g. qualitative vs. quantitative research) - the ability to choose the appropriate method(s) of data collection to answer this question - the ability to choose the appropriate participants/ language corpus to answer this question - the ability to analyse the data - the ability to choose and present relevant results - the ability to structure linguistic papers - etc. The course is meant to give you a hands-on experience in working empirically yourself – from developing a research question to analysing and presenting your data. Therefore, the teaching methods in this course will vary from regular lectures in the first part to (individual) counselling and consultation about your own projects (be it posters, term papers or other kinds of examination). Students who registered for one of the linguistic seminars in ang617 also need to register for this lecture. The lecture will take place asychronously as I will provide you with the lecture slides via video recordings.

Seminar

3.02.170 - S English as a Global Language
- Prof. Dr. Ronald Geluykens
Wednesday: 18:00 - 20:00, weekly (from 20/10/21)
Dates on Thursday, 06.01.2022 12:00 - 14:00
The central topic of this seminar is to investigate language change. We will discuss roughly 1500 years focussing on periods that have conventionally been classified as "turning-points" in the linguistic history of the English language. Our inquiry will encompass processes of language internal change as well as the external influence as a result of language contact. The seminar itself will be presented as a downloadable podcast plus ppt-presentation, meaning that there is no weekly live session. However, we will meet a few times to clarify organizational matters and/or any questions that come up.
3.02.171 - S From Semantics to Pragmatics: Putting Meaning into Context
- Robert Sowa
Monday: 12:00 - 14:00, weekly (from 18/10/21)

How can we convey meaning to a hearer successfully? How can a hearer understand what a speaker means? This course aims to provide the students with a holistic understanding of the differences between meaning in and out of context. Therefore, we are going to investigate the elusive line between semantics and pragmatics. Although this course introduces pragmatic theories, it nevertheless relies on practical examples of spoken language to show which areas of natural language these theories describe. In other words: The theories introduced in this course are all applicable to communicative situations we all are familiar with.
3.02.172 - S Interlanguage Pragmatics: Studying EFL Learners' Pragmatic Competence
- Dr. Ilka Flöck, she/ her
Thursday: 12:00 - 14:00, weekly (from 21/10/21)

“Hwæt sceolan we drinkan?”, what looks like an odd mixture of English and German is actually correct English – just more or less 1300 years old. One can still rather easily recognize the interrogative pronoun “what” only that the “hw” is nowadays reversed. “Sceolan” is probably a little hard to decipher at first glance, however at least for German natives it should – especially in combination with the last word of the question – be quickly identifiable as the equivalent to Modern English “shall” (or sollen – in OE the “sc” was pronounced as “sh”). The fellow who phrased this particular question therefore spoke perfect (Old) English, and yet how come that it looks more like a heavy German dialect than proper English? This issue will be one of the leading questions for this seminar. Where did the English language come from? Why is it even called English? Where did the languages before English go? Was there something like an “Old English period”? To answer those (and other questions) a period of language history lasting around 800 years will be examined. The focus will thereby not only lay with understanding the basics of Old English spelling, phonology and surface structure, but also in identifying key concepts of language contact and language change and how they have left traces within the everyday language we use.
3.02.173 - S History of English
- Nils Rademacher
Tuesday: 10:00 - 12:00, weekly (from 19/10/21)

The central topic of this seminar is to investigate language change. We will discuss roughly 1500 years focussing on periods that have conventionally been classified as "turning-points" in the linguistic history of the English language. Our inquiry will encompass processes of language internal change as well as the external influence as a result of language contact. The seminar itself will be presented as a downloadable podcast plus ppt-presentation, meaning that there is no weekly live session. However, we will meet a few times to clarify organizational matters and/or any questions that come up.
3.02.174 - S The Early Development of the English Language (Old and Middle English)
- Nils Rademacher
Tuesday: 12:00 - 14:00, weekly (from 19/10/21)

The central topic of this seminar is to investigate language change. We will discuss roughly 1500 years focussing on periods that have conventionally been classified as "turning-points" in the linguistic history of the English language. Our inquiry will encompass processes of language internal change as well as the external influence as a result of language contact. The seminar itself will be presented as a downloadable podcast plus ppt-presentation, meaning that there is no weekly live session. However, we will meet a few times to clarify organizational matters and/or any questions that come up.

Notes on the module

Prerequisites	Aktive Teilnahme (gemäß § 9 Abs. 5 BPO neu) Curriculare Abfolge (gemäß § 9 Abs. 6 BPO neu): erfolgreicher Abschluss von ang060 Introduction to Linguistics and the English Language (Teil 1 und 2)
Prüfungszeiten	Abgabe schriftlicher Leistungen bis spätestens 15.03. im Wintersemester bzw. 15.09. im Sommersemester. Schriftliche Leistungen sind zusätzlich zur Abgabe in Papierform in Stud.IP hochzuladen.
Module examination	PF
Skills to be acquired in this module	Studierende sollen in der Lage sein, Sprachwandel und Sprachvariation und die Beziehung der beiden Phänomene zueinander zu erkennen und zu erklären. Im Bezug auf den Sprachwandel bedeutet dies, dass Studierende die wichtigen Entwicklungsstadien der englischen Sprache und ihre strukturellen Hauptmerkmale (Phonologie, Morphologie, Syntax, Semantik) erkennen können und die zu Grunde liegenden generellen Faktoren verstehen, die Sprachwandel verursachen. Dies setzt das Wissen um den soziokulturellen Kontext der jeweiligen Epochen voraus. Studierende sollen sich mit den spezifischen Methoden der diachronen Sprachwissenschaft vertraut machen – im Speziellen mit den Problemen und Einschränkungen, die mit der Analyse nicht-zeitgenössischer Daten einhergehen. Im Bereich der Sprachvariation sollen Studierende in der Lage sein die verschiedenen Arten der Variation im Sprachgebrauch unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der kontextuellen Variation (Pragmatik) und der sozialen/ regionalen Variation (Soziolinguistik) zu identifizieren. Besonders sollen sie dabei lernen, verschiedene Varietäten des Englischen systematisch zu vergleichen und Faktoren zu erklären, die Sprachvariation verursachen. In der zu den Seminaren gehörigen Vorlesung sollen Studierende die Fähigkeit erlangen, Methoden und Verfahren der Sprachwissenschaft (besonders in den Bereichen Sprachwandel und Sprachvariation) zu beschreiben, kritisch zu evaluieren und (forschungsbezogen) anzuwenden.