Syllabus

English 2030—Language in Society Fall 2007
T/TH 9:30-11:00am
Tiffany Rousculp
Office: N324K Office Hour: Th 8:30-9:30am
Phone: 957-4992, x. 3 or leave message E-mail: t.rousculp@slcc.edu (best way to reach me)

Course Readings:
What’s Language Got to Do with It? By Walters and Brody
Do You Speak American? PBS website www.pbs.org/speak (urls on the schedule)
Course packet
Some readings may be held on reserve

Other Materials: For the Language Exercises and Final Project, you might want to purchase a recording and playback device (tape recorder/digital voice recorder).

Course Description: Language impacts everything we do: how we think, how we learn, how we view ourselves and interact with others. We will look carefully at the patterns and functions of language to gain a better sense of how language establishes our cultural identities and social allegiances, how language creates and disseminates knowledge, how it develops and maintains power. We will interrogate the functions of language and consider how simple alterations in language use might lead to distinctly different outcomes, both in terms of meaning and cultural impact.

General Education
This course is part of the General Education Program at Salt Lake Community College. It is designed not only to teach the information and skills required by the discipline, but also to develop vital workplace skills and to teach strategies and skills that can be used for life-long learning.

While the subject of each course is important and useful, we become truly educated through making connections of such varied information with the different methods of organizing human experience that are practiced by different disciplines. Therefore, this course, when combined with other General Education courses, will enable you to develop broader perspectives and deeper understandings of your community and the world, as well as challenge previously held assumptions about the world and its inhabitants. You will also explore a wide variety of topics with an eye toward discovering new interests and uncovering new talents.

General Education courses teach basic skills as well as broaden a student’s knowledge of a wide range of subjects. Education is much more than the acquisition of facts; it is being able to use information in meaningful ways in order to enrich one’s life. General Education courses focus on communication, creativity, and critical thinking skills and along with the substance of the course’s information, an appreciation of the esthetics of the area of study and its connection to the larger social web.

This course fulfills two General Education categories: Diversity and Humanities.

Diversity is the study of certain differences (race, ethnicity, social class, gender, ability, sexual orientation, age, religion, etc.) and how those differences translate throughout U.S. history into disparities of power, privilege, and access to opportunity. This course will identify and challenge your assumptions and encourage you to consider multiple perspectives so that you can become a more responsible and effective citizen in this multicultural society.

This course will invite engaged discussion and authentic personal reflection. Because we will often express contrasting views it will be essential to be respectful by listening and asking questions of those with whom we disagree.

Accommodation for Disabilities
If you need accommodation for disabilities, please talk to me.

Writing Center
SLCC has a Writing Center at each campus. The Writing Center is a great place to get a peer review or talk with a writing tutor about how to overcome writer’s block. At the Redwood Campus, the WC is located in AD 218. At the South City Campus, you can find writing advisors in the Learning Center (N308). Also, check SLCC’s online Writing Center at www.slcc.edu/swc.


Assignments (brief descriptions and grade breakdown)

Participation (10%): This course is discussion-based and, therefore, it is important for you to be here to share with, and learn from, each other. Be on time and don’t miss too many classes (two classes seems enough). When you are here, engage with each other, express your ideas and opinions and listen well.

Blog Postings (20%): On a regular basis, post to our class blog http://languagechatf07.blogspot.com/ . The blog is an informal space and will give you the opportunity to pay attention to how language is used in the world around you, to realize that our course content is not just theoretical, but connected to the “real” world. The goal of the blog is to get you to connect our class discussions with the way you use and observe language in your everyday life. It will also allow us to extend our conversation beyond our class meetings and the course text.

Language Analyses (40%): Complete three brief analyses (10, 15 and 15%) of language in use (both oral and written). These assignments will provide you a chance to hone your skills for your final project and will help you to apply course concepts to specific texts. I will provide you with detailed guidelines for each analysis assignment.

Final Project Proposal (5%): Write a short proposal about your plans for the final project. Describe the language community/practices you plan to observe and why you’ve made that choice.

Final Project (25%): Observe the language practices of a specific community, one where you are not a participant. Once you have collected a good deal of material, you will write a report of your observations, characterizing the community and analyzing how discourse functions within it. The project should not only aim to understand the discourse practices of this specific community, but also provide insight into our larger understanding of how language functions within culture.