Course Description
Historical sociolinguistics is a field in which the interaction of language and society is studied within historical perspectives and/or in historical periods; we apply sociolinguistics tools, theories and models to the study of historical language. In this course, we will give specific attention to data types and empirical issues. How do we contextualize our (written) data to make it meaningful for language variation and change issues? Taking the data itself as a starting point, we will explore different types of possible research questions, touching both quantitative and qualitative approaches. We will focus on topics linked to the interaction of language and power; usage and norms; as well as linguistic usage and language ideologies, among others. The format of the course will be based on lectures and discussions, and participants will be asked to work on exercises using handwritten (correspondence, memoirs, etc.) and typed (newspapers, legal and administrative documents, etc.) historical corpora.
Area Tags: Sociolinguistics, Diachrony, Discourse, Variation, Language Contact, Corpus Studies
(Sessions 1 & 2) Monday/Thursday 1:30-2:50
Location: ILC S415
Instructor: Sandrine Tailleur
Sandrine Tailleur is a French-Canadian sociolinguist and associate professor at the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi, where she has been teaching linguistics in both French and English since 2012. Tailleur is a specialist in the history of French in Canada and interested in language variation and change from a historical perspective. Her research topics of predilection are linked to the dynamics between languages (and language varieties), of which we find traces in historical speakers’ linguistic behaviors. She has received financing for many research projects aimed at studying different kinds of historical data, such as personal correspondence (to understand variation within individual grammars) and newspapers (to find Indigenous voices within Canadian French-language newspapers).
