Current Directions in Linguistics 3201-1WKL

Topics discussed:

 1. Trends in modern linguistics
(modernity and ‘philosophy of doubt’: the rise of the mental view of the world in science and linguistics; Neogrammarian models of language; structural and systemic-functional approaches to language; armchair linguistics vs. fieldwork studies; autonomy/modularity and interdisciplinarity of linguistics; language as a socio-cultural phenomenon: local and global dimensions of communication)

2. Anthropological linguistics
(cultural/linguistic relativity: Franz Boas, Edward Sapir, Benjamin Lee Whorf – early explorations of native American languages: ‘contact cultures’; world categorization in American Indian and Eskimo languages: universal vs. culture-specific grammatical categories, abstract vs. concrete terms, systems of numerals; relativity of time in Hopi)

3. Ethnolinguistics
(early research expeditions to Melanesia, Guyana, New Guinea; William Rivers – Torres Straits: ‘intensive study’, ‘genealogical method’, ‘concrete’ method; Bronisław Malinowski – the Trobriands: ‘participant observation’, fieldwork methodology, ‘open-air’ studies; language in context; functional approach to communication; language as action)

4. Sociolinguistics
(social and regional dialects; variables of class, sex, age, ethnicity, etc.; covert/overt prestige; hypercorrectness; social networks; language change: sound change, syntactic change, change of meaning; changes from above/changes from below; sociolinguistic and inherent causes of change)

5. Corpus linguistics
(qualitative and quantitative research; variational methodology; synchronic and diachronic corpora; patterns of language use according to social and textual parameters; The Polish National Corpus)

6. Linguistic pragmatics
(negotiating meaning in interaction: abstract meaning vs. contextual meaning, utterance force, interpretation, interplay of sense, reference and structure in context; ‘doing’ things with words: ‘language games’ and speech acts; implicature; inference; presupposition; Cooperative Principle; Conversational Maxims; direct and indirect styles of communication)

7. Cross-cultural linguistics
(languages and cultures in contact: genetic vs. areal relationships: geolinguistics, multilingualism, multiglossia, culture and ideology, Sprachbund; language interference: borrowings, code-switching, hybridization; linguistic politeness across cultures: ‘high- and low-context’ cultures, deductive and inductive styles, cross-cultural differences in business and institutional communication)

8. Conversational analysis
(moves; adjacency pairs; turn-taking; back-channeling; paratone; topic management and control; conversational roles; selected transcription conventions)

9. (Critical) Discourse Analysis
(definitions of ‘discourse’; ‘discourse’ in the Polish and English language traditions; spoken and written text as a unit of discourse; effects of power, conflict and ideology in communication; strategies of persuasion and manipulation in public discourse)

10. Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR)
(Dialogic Model of discourse; communicative action vs. instrumental/strategic action; conflict management, conciliatory ways of communicating: discourse of therapy, mediation, reconciliation, etc.)