Weekly outline

  • LINGUISTICS

    Course: LINGUISTICS

                                                                                                                    2024 / 2025

    SEMESTER: ONE

                                                                                                              

    Full name:  Dr. Haroun MELGANI

    Department of English, Faculty of Arts and Foreign Languages, Oum El Bouaghi University, Algeria

    Email: melgani.haroun@univ-oeb.dz 

    CV:  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JLkKfgXPhfi32O_SAoq0gpcArMz4WNs9/view?usp=sharing 

    Course: Linguistics

    Code UEF3.1

    INSTRUCTIONAL OBJECTIVES: Students will be able to:

    • Understand the concept of Sociolinguistics, its main theoretical tents and essential objectives 

    • Demystify the basic constructs that pertain to Sociolinguistics, such as Vernacular, Speech community and Variability
    • Distinguish between Accents, Dialects, and Languages
    • Understand the main theoretical axioms of social dialectology 
    • Understand how linguistic variation had been conceptualized and approached in early (oft-cited) classical research studies
    • Demystify the concepts of Sex and Gender and other Gender related constructs
    • Understand how Gender is conceptualized and approached in Variationist Sociolinguistic inquiry

    Description of the Course: 

    This course overviews the relationship between language and society, foregrounding how languages and language varieties co-vary with different, interrelated, socio-demographic motives. The logic of this course builds from basic sociolinguistic notions, the construct of Variability and its sociolinguistic dimensions, to social dialectology and Gender-based linguistic variation. Each lesson contains Group and individual home assignments, group chats and YouTube videos about many language related issues. In order to reflect the socio-phonetic heterogeneity of speech, this course contains many ‘bona fide’ examples from various world language varieties and multilingual communities.

            Target Group(s):   

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              Third year Students, LMD         

      Speciality: English 

      Course Prerequisites:

    Subjects/basic knowledge students must have acquired prior taking this course: 

    Formal Linguistics; Modern Linguistics; Chomsky's approach to Linguistics (UG, Linguistic Competence); Language Communication; Social Identity, Identity Construction.

    Course Instructional Materials: PDF files, WORD texts, links, graphs, charts & Videos.

    Pre-Test 1: http://tele-ens.univ-oeb.dz/moodle/pluginfile.php/125482/course/section/15992/ok%20%281%29.pdf
    Pre-Test 2: http://tele-ens.univ-oeb.dz/moodle/pluginfile.php/125482/course/section/15992/ok%20%282%29.pdf

                                                                           OUTLINE

    LESSON 1/ WEEK ONE:  An introduction to Sociolinguistics

    LESSON 2/ WEEK TWO: Essential sociolinguistic Axioms

    LESSON 3/ WEEK THREE: Traditional Dialectology (Part 1)

    LESSON 3/ WEEK FOUR: Traditional Dialectology (Part 2)

    LESSON 4/ WEEK FIVE: Basic Sociolinguistic Notions (Part 1)

    LESSON 4/ WEEK SIX: Basic Sociolinguistic Notions (Part 2)

    LESSON 5/ WEEK SEVEN: Social dialectology (Part 1)

    LESSON 5/ WEEK EIGHT: Social dialectology (Part 2)

    LESSON 6/ WEEK NINE: Gender based Language Variation (Part 1)

    LESSON 6/ WEEK TEN:  Gender based Language Variation (Part 2)

    WEEK ELEVEN: TD TEST

                                                                EXTENDED OUTLINE:

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    Session Duration: 90 minutes

    Evaluation:
    The teacher evaluates each student’s knowledge and understanding of the course at the end of the instructional unit. Students are expected to answer some questions about concepts and issues related to language and society. It should be noted that 50 % of the Grading system adopted in this course pertains to the TD tests, whereas the other 50 % pertains to the final exams

  • Introductory Session

    Lesson Description:
    This lesson casts light over the interplay between language and its social map. It, also, addresses other related concepts such as social relationships, peer effect, language and individual/group identity formation. 

    Learning Objectives: After studying this lesson, students will be able to:
    a. Understand the correlation between language habits and society
    b. Understand the role of identity in language use and social change

  • Basic sociolinguistic concepts

    Lesson Description: This lesson seeks to address basic concepts in variationist sociolinguistic discipline. In essence, it foregrounds the way each notion is defined (and characterized) by fieldworkers and (socio)linguists.

    Learning Objectives: After studying this lesson, students will be able to:

    a. Demystify the meaning of essential concepts in sociolinguistic inquiry( e.g., Standard, Variation, Linguistic variable)

    b. Distinguish between vernacular and standard.

  • Formal linguistics vs Sociolinguistics

    Lesson Description: This lesson seeks to address basic concepts of Formal Linguistics and Variationist Sociolinguistics. 

    Learning Objectives: After studying this lesson, students will be able to:

    a. Demystify the meaning of Formal Linguistics and Variationist Sociolinguistics

    b. Understand the basic goals and theoretical tenets of Formal Linguistics and Variationist Sociolinguistics

  • Vernacular vs Standard / Speech community

    Lesson Description:

    The term ‘Speech Community’ is a locus of interest for many sociolinguists; it is regarded as
    a basic construct in the sociolinguistic research. This lesson casts light over its nature,  characteristics, and considers the ways in which it had been conceptualized by earliest linguists and sociolinguists.

    Learning Objectives: After studying this lesson, students will be able to:

    a.  Demystify the locus of Speech community

    b.  Understand its essential socio-linguistic determinants and criteria

    c. Understand the how it was defined by (socio)linguists from different strands of thought

  • Language, dialect and accent

    Lesson Description: This lesson seeks to explain the difference between accent, dialect and language. It, also, provides examples for each sociolinguistic notion 

    Learning Objectives: After studying this lesson, students will be able to:

    a. Understand the characteristics of accent, dialect and language

    b. Understand the ways in which accents, dialects and languages are related

    c. Understand the different ways in which individual speakers avail themselves of their accents, dialects and languages to express social affiliation and membership. 

  • Social dialectology

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    Lesson Description:

     variation in speech is not free, as earlier linguists had traditionally believed. It is structured and systematically conditioned by external factors. Some of these factors are ‘natural’, such as space and time, which are completely independent of human society, while other factors seem to be ‘human’, such as gender, social class and religious orientations. This lesson overviews basic social dialectology tenets and foregrounds, in details, two classical sociolinguistic studies.

    Learning Objectives: After studying this lesson, students will be able to:

    a.  Understand the essential theoretical tenets and methods of Social Dialectology  

    b.  Understand the locus of sociolinguistic variation and its strong connection with many socio-regional parameters.

  • Language and Gender

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    Lesson Description:
    This course sheds light over the link between language and its social map, and addresses the different ways of conceptualizing the relation of gender and speech. This discussion, it must be noted, will be accompanied with reference to some seminal works in the western Arabic speech communities.

    Learning Objectives: After studying this lesson, students will be able to:
    a. Explain the difference between sex and gender,
    b. Explore the correlation language and gender,
    c. Highlight the three main principles of language change and gender,
    d. Address some links to aspects of age, social stratification and prestige.

    Prior knowledge Requirements: students are expected to demonstrated previous knowledge in the following subjects: Basic sociolinguistic concepts-e.g, vernacular, language, dialects,..etc

  • TD TEST / EXAMS

                                                 Scoring:

                                         TD tests: 50 % (20 points)

                                         Attendance: 5 points  

                                         Participation: 2 points

                                         TD Test: 13 points

                                         Final Exam: 50 % (20 points)