ClassInfo

What could be more central to our lives than language and food? We learn language (together with gesture) and the tastes (textures, smells, visual features, and sounds) we associate with food early in our lives, and both form an important part of our identities. In this course, we will address the following questions:

1) How do we organize our language and bodies around food, i.e., how do we use them to get

to and from the table, and to proceed in a meal (e.g., at a sushi restaurant)?

2) How do we use language to taste, identify and assess food, and how do these fine distinctions and discriminations define us as people and relate to our identity?

3) How do we talk about our experience of food and tell stories about food?

4) What metaphors do we have for food and how does language relate to gender in the context of food?

5) How is language used to socialize children around food?

We will explore the relation between language and food by video recording and analyzing actual conversations among people eating a variety of foods, using a variety of languages, including English, Japanese, Chinese, Lao, Kri, Eegimaa, Wolof, Italian, Persian, German, Danish, and French. The class will be most rewarding
for students who like to cook/eat, talk about food, and educate their palate.

World Englishes: In this course, we will explore the linguistic questions that arise concerning the many varieties of English that are spoken around the globe. Our overarching concern will be what we can learn about humans and the human mind by studying the variation found across English varieties. The course will focus primarily on the structural similarities and differences that we find between different varieties and how such investigations inform our understanding of human grammar more generally. In order to investigate these structural issues, we will also consider questions surrounding the contexts in which these Englishes arise and are spoken: Who is a native speaker? What is a standard? What value judgments do people ascribe to different varieties of English? What sorts of (linguistic and extra-linguistic) relationships exist between different varieties of English and their speakers? In order to pursue these questions, this course relies on the basic understanding of phonetics, phonology, and syntax provided by an Introduction to Linguistics course. Course readings will be drawn from the linguistic literature and you will be expected to conduct your own literature and primary linguistic data (via Internet and media sources) research for your final projects. Through this course, you will gain an understanding of how English is situated in the global linguistic landscape, an ability to critically read linguistics articles, and experience in analyzing linguistic data to understand patterns and variation.