Courses

Edu T&L 665: Applied Linguistics

This course treats two aspects of applied linguistics for teachers. First, we explore the structure and use of language, specifically English. Second, we learn about the social context of language use and its implications for teaching a diverse student population. Requirements for all students include class attendance and participation, completion of practice exercises and written reflections, one take-home mid-term exam and one student project in which students collect and analyze their own language data.

Edu T&L 803: Language in Society

This course explores issues related to the social dimensions of language and language learning, focusing on the societal, cultural, political, psychological, and interactional contexts of language use. Issues around language use and learning are closely intertwined with people’s perceptions of and attitudes toward particular languages and dialects, various language standards, and particular groups of language users. With increasing globalization, U.S. schools have become more linguistically and culturally diverse, so that many teachers confront these issues on a daily basis. This course will provide research-based understandings about language in its sociocultural context at both the macro (societal) and micro (interactional) levels, helping teachers to better understand diverse ways of language use and learning that students from different cultural backgrounds experience, and it will facilitate teaching from a sociocultural perspective.

Course content covers

  • the relationship between language and ethnicity,
  • the variety of English and Englishes in the U.S. as well as worldwide,
  • the role of culture in language learning,
  • the consequences for children and for teachers of differences between language practices at home and at school,
  • the influence of gender in language learning and use,
  • multiplicity in the use and development of languages and literacies in a society.

Edu T&L 906: Language Learning Across Cultures

This course explores processes of Language Socialization, showing how language learning varies across cultural groups. Language Socialization was first conceptualized as a field in the mid 1980s, largely to provide an alternative to the traditionally a-contextual and virtually purely linguistic study of language acquisition in children, as well as to begin to understand how children’s language learning differed across cultures.

Although this field initially blossomed, with studies of language socialization in a variety of cultures, since that time there have been only a few book-length works, several of which have become classics in the field. Many ethnographic studies have focused on language and culture in a variety of populations worldwide, providing analytic descriptions of language ideologies, notions of personhood as constructed through speaking, oral traditions and literacy practices, aesthetic ways of using language (verbal art), etc. Fewer studies, however, have focused on how the ways of using language in specific cultures is learned by new generations.

To study language socialization, research must investigate a dual but simultaneous process: socialization through language and socialization to use language. Language learning, then, is central to the overall process of socialization in which children, and other novices, learn to become members of, and communicate in, particular cultural groups. Because this is precisely how language and culture are both transmitted and transformed over the generations, it is a key site for discovering the salient ideologies and practices of particular groups. Clearly, what is important to a particular group will be taught or otherwise modeled for its children. Language socialization research usually involves not only long-term ethnographic participant-observation, but also systematic audio and/or videotaping of caretaker - child interactions over the course of a year or more, in order to capture developmental data.

Readings for this course include conceptual treatments and synthetic reviews about language socialization studies and empirical studies of language socialization in a variety of cultural contexts. These contexts include both monolingual and bilingual settings, both L1 and L2 settings, and both language and literacy socialization. Readings include required texts and additional articles and chapters (available on Carmen).

Edu T&L 848: Linguistic Diversity and Literacy: Varieties of (Global) English and Education

This course explores varieties of English and the implications of this diversity for education, drawing on research from the fields of TESOL, applied linguistics, and sociolinguistics. A major goal of the course is to expand understandings of how different kinds of English are culturally embedded in different populations and settings.
The course begins with a focus on global English and its particular varieties in India, Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and elsewhere, considering a variety of settings and social, cultural, and political issues in the use of English as a world language. We then explore ethnic, class, and gender variation in American English and the relationship of vernacular varieties (African American Vernacular English, Latino English, white Northern Vernacular English, etc.) to Standard English and literacy. In particular, we consider applications of such dialect study for school testing and for the teaching of reading, writing, and Standard English. Finally, we widen our focus to include students worldwide who are speakers of nonstandard dialects of English, English-based Creole languages, and other “mixed” English varieties.

Throughout the readings and discussion, students in the course consider how research-based knowledge on language diversity can be used to facilitate language development, both oral and written, in diverse student populations. This seminar introduces the Ethnography of Communication as a field of inquiry for studies of oral and written language, i.e. oral genres and literacy practices. Readings explore cultural differences in language use, investigating oral language and/or literacy practices within specific populations and across social contexts. This course is essential for those considering language or literacy-focused ethnographic research for their dissertations.

Edu T&L 931 and 932: The Ethnography of Communication

This two quarter course introduces the theoretical framework and methodology of the ethnography of communication. Research in this field investigates language use–both oral and written–in its social and cultural contexts. Thus it is useful for researchers concerned with literacy, and with the inter-relationships of oral language and literacy in daily practice across diverse populations, each of which has distinctive ethnolinguistic styles. In addition to two texts that cover theory, methods, and central concepts of the field, other texts provide examples of research carried out within this tradition.

Note: The Ethnography of Communication is offered every other year over two quarters. In the first quarter, students learn about theories and methodologies used in this field and identify a field site for research. In the second quarter students continue to learn about theory and methodology, but also carry out a small pilot study of language and/or literacy in a particular context.

Texts (Tentative Selection)

  • Saville-Troike, Muriel. 2003. The Ethnography of Communication: An Introduction, third edition. Malden, MA: Basil Blackwell Publishing.
  • Duranti, A. (ed.) 2001. Linguistic Anthropology: A Reader. Oxford: Blackwell.
  • Farr, M. 2006. Rancheros in Chicagoacán: Language and Identity in a Transnational Community. Austin: University of Texas Press.
  • Hoffman, K. 2008. We Share Walls: Language, Land, and Gender in Berber Morocco. Oxford: Blackwell.
  • Mendoza-Denton, N. 2008. Homegirls: Language and Cultural Practice among Latina Youth Gangs. Oxford: Blackwell.
  • Other Readings (available on Carmen: www.carmen.osu.edu)

EDU T&L 925.56: Bilingualism and Biliteracy

This course explores sociolinguistic and ethnolinguistic research in multilingual settings with an emphasis on bilingualism and bi- or multilingual communities. Topics covered include linguistic, cognitive, and social aspects of bilingualism; multilingual speech communities; code-switching; language attitudes and ideologies; language maintenance and/or shift; bilingualism and education; and biliteracy. We will also consider issues from a global perspective, including language policies and globalization.

The course begins with a review of prevalent concepts of bilingualism and demonstrates that bilingualism is both an individual and a social phenomenon. Additionally, it explores the evolution of various bilingual communities and educational policies, as well as bilingual educational practice in the United States. Through examining and discussing exemplary research on multilingual communities, special emphasis will be placed on methods for studying bilingualism in social context, including recording, transcribing, and analyzing multilingual discourse. By the end of the course, students should be able to use what they learn in field-based research that produces a small-sized yet solid research report on a multilingual community.

The overall aim of this course is to expand understandings of how language is culturally embedded in different populations and settings, enabling us to consider the implications of these expanded understandings for the education of the increasingly diverse populations within U.S. schools.

Course Objectives

  • To learn why people become bilingual; why they maintain their first language or shift to a dominant language in the community;
  • To explore how bilinguals use the language varieties in their repertoire in interpersonal interactions;
  • To examine how specific social factors such as ethnicity, culture, gender, and socioeconomic class can influence language use and language learning;
  • To explore the beliefs, attitudes, and identities of people as they use language in particular contexts, and how these influence their language practices in their bilingual community;
  • To investigate developmental, societal and political issues related to bilingualism and biliteracy;
  • To critically view the process of language learning and use in bilingual communities with respect to discourse, identity and power;
  • To develop a project by
    1. identifying a bilingual community in Central Ohio and gathering background information on the community using government statistics (e.g., the U.S. Census) and a literature review;
    2. gathering linguistic data and analyzing it; and
    3. producing a research report.