122251 AR MA+MEd Advanced Course in Linguistics - Focus: Applied (2022W)

This module will equip students with the tools to study the ways in which speakers use language to display and construct their identities in talk. The ‘discursive turn’ to identity has shaped current thinking across disciplines, including the humanities and social sciences. The understanding that speakers’ identities are reflected and accomplished in spoken interaction, is central to constructionist approaches to discourse and identity in sociocultural linguistics. This has been evident in research exploring language, gender and sexuality in particular, but extends to many other areas of personal or public language use, including cross-cultural communication, conversational humour, friendship talk, studies of institutional or work contexts including doctor-patient interaction, student tutorials, court cases and job interviews.

The module will encourage students to study language and identity practices in various authentic contexts, such as:

• the multilingual language practices of Turkish-German girls who construct resistant ‘power girl’ identities both at home and in school;
• the linguistic accomplishment of distinct class-based sexualities of ‘lesbian’ vs ‘boy’ in a new Dehli NGO;
• the (successful or unsuccessful) conversational strategies employed by ethnic minority and overseas interviewees in UK job interviews;
• the playful and humorous authenticating practices of young Southeast London men aligning with black hip hop masculinities;
• the ways in which sexual consent is reconstructed linguistically and ideologically in a Canadian courtroom;
• the voices adopted by school children in the UK when they align themselves with or distance themselves from their teachers;
• the multiple layers of narrative positioning in the autobiographical interviews with young, urban African-American fathers.
A range of methodological frameworks and analytic concepts will be explored, including ethnographic approaches to language analysis, interactional sociolinguistics, critical discourse analysis, conversational analysis and narrative analysis. Seminar discussions will seek to establish what each of these approaches has to offer to the analysis of discourse practices and identity constructions of speakers in naturally occurring talk.

The course will also equip students to carry out their own independent projects, making students aware of issues of ethical consent and teaching students how to collect, transcribe and analyse a sample of spoken language of their choice. Students will then get the opportunity to present and discuss their work with their colleagues in seminars.

Learning Outcomes
By the end of the course you should be able to:
• identify appropriate spoken data, methods of data collection and transcription
• carry out linguistic transcription of any spoken interactional data
• demonstrate critical understanding of a range of approaches, concepts and debates in spoken discourse analysis
• apply a range of methodological frameworks and analytical concepts to the analysis of discourse and identity in talk
• source, discuss and draw on relevant research literature
• demonstrate independent and collaborative research