Syllabus
You're allowed ____ absences, no questions asked. After that, I take off a final course percentage point for each unexcused absence.
3
For your group project you will present to your peers on _____.
A book. Or a chapter from a book.
In this course we are going to study the "_____ ______" nature of language.
socially charged
...and says to the barkeep: "What's new, my good fellow?" To which the barkeep grimly replies: "Medooksded." The linguist, having no extralinguistic context to understand the barkeep's dialect, only scratches his head--until the barkeep points under the bar and says, slowly so that the linguist can understand:
Exams make up ____% of your final grade.
50
Our first topic this semester, which will start next week, is on language _______.
variation
Language in the World involves studying these five WH- questions about language.
Who / Where / When / What / Why
...and takes a seat in the only empty chair in the place. The patron sitting next to him is elated, and announces: "Guess who you JUST missed? Noam Chomsky! He told me all about how he takes a mentalist approach to language, which means he's interested in describing how language is represented in the mind. You know, very abstract stuff." The linguist shakes his head and replies: "Actually I'm the opposite. I take an _______ approach to language. I only trust evidence that we find out there in the real world."
empiricist
There are ____ books required for you to purchase for this class. (Don't count the book for your group presentation.)
0
How many pages should your final take-home exam be?
There is no final take-home exam. There's a final course reflection, around 3-4 pages double-spaced.
The five WH- questions about language give us information on these five corresponding sociolinguistic variables:
identity / place / time / structures / ideologies
...and proudly announces: "I have just finished my PhD in variationist sociolinguistics." The other patrons simply look at him as if he just escaped from an insane asylum. Finally, the barkeep says, "That so? Well, what the heck do you actually do, then?" The variationist replies: "Most of my work is __________, which means I get data and then I look at HOW OFTEN (frequency) or HOW MANY TIMES (number) people use a particular linguistic feature.
quantitative