Institution: University of Ottawa ()
Category: Faculty of Arts
Language:
English
Course Description
This course will outline a number of real-world examples of dialectal differences between languages. It will begin with introducing the difference between language and dialect, how dialects develop in the first place, and how different social groups (like governments and citizens) may define a dialect. We will then look at specific parts of a language that may change to create a dialect (like how words are ordered and how words can sound different) and the social ramifications of discrimination and stereotyping based on dialect. The goal of this course is to introduce the concept of languages as linguistic systems, and how to recognize linguistic discrimination in their daily lives.
Biography
I'm Britton Williams, a PhD student studying Linguistics at UOttawa. I am mainly a syntactician, but have worked quite a extensively with dialectology. This includes Romance Dialectology and syntactic/lexical differences between related sign languages. Nice to meet you!
