Course Description

This course will introduce to issues in sociolinguistics with a special focus on minoritized language contexts. We will pay special attention to the issue of “speakerhood” as discussed in language revitalization contexts where “new speakers” constitute a new salient social category in the social ecologies they reside. We will revisit major theoretical concepts from various strands of sociolinguistics that also speak to minorization and globalization processes simultaneously (e.g. standardization, ideologies, authenticity, raciolinguistics, gender inclusivity, linguistic appropriation, etc.). Course sessions will involve discussion of the readings and application of theory and methods to data on new speakers and other minoritized groups.

Area Tags: Sociolinguistics

(Sessions 1 & 2) Monday/Thursday 10:30am – 11:50am

Location: ILC S415

Instructor: Itxaso Rodríguez-Ordóñez

Itxaso Rodríguez-Ordóñez is an Assistant Professor in Linguistics at California State University Long Beach where she teaches courses in Sociolinguistics, Bilingualism, and Language and Social Justice. She earned her PhD in Hispanic Linguistics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her primary research interests include contact linguistics, variationist sociolinguistics and minority language users (new speakers/heritage speakers). Her work investigates mechanisms of contact-induced change and the way this variation achieves social meaning with a special focus on the Basque-Spanish and Spanish-English contact situations. Publications based on this work have appeared at Journal of Sociolinguistics, Journal of Language Contact, Language and Linguistics Compass, Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism and Spanish in Context.