Language, Youth and Society
Fall & Spring
(This course will not run in Fall 2012)
| 3 credits
| Elective
Majors:
Anthropology
and
Sociology
In this course we discuss the language of children and youth, predominantly in contemporary European metropolitan contexts. We approach language from a sociolinguistic perspective and thereby we consider language a social practice. The language use of children and youth will be treated as socio-cultural historically situated behaviours and ideologies. Language will be the case through which we investigate wider contemporary social and cultural developments. The course combines readings of theory and empirical studies and covers basic sociolinguistic theory, post-colonial theories of language and theories of linguistic anthropology.
A linguistic background is not required to follow the course and we will discuss topics of relevance to a range of disciplines within human and social science, including for instance anthropology, sociology and education.
The aim of this course is to:
- Enhance students’ awareness of the social, cultural and ideological aspects of language.
- Introduce students to significant and contemporary sociolinguistic research on children, youth and language, and present the students to different empirical methods within this research field.
- Give students the ability to critically reflect on interactional and linguistic data and to adequately make use of theoretical concepts in their discussions and analyses.
This is a University of Copenhagen course open to DIS students. Please ensure you read the full details on taking external courses through DIS.
Instructors
-
Lian Madsen
Ph.D. (University of Copenhagen, 2008). Postdoctoral researcher at the University of Copenhagen, Department of Scandinavian Studies and Linguistics. Research interests: Ethnographic, interactional sociolinguistics and discourse analysis, urban youth language, language and identities, poly-lingual practices, and language ideologies. With DIS since 2009.
-
Jens Normann Jørgensen
Cand.mag. (Danish and History, University of Copenhagen, 1978). Professor of Danish as a Second Language, Department of Scandinavian Studies and Linguistics, University of Copenhagen, since 1995. Head of the section of Danish as a Second and Foreign Language. With DIS since 2007.
