* LING 0110b, From Evidence to Court to The Constitution: Language and the Law  Claire Bowern

Laws are made through language, interpreted through language, and made about language. This class is an overview of legal aspects of language, the use of linguistic arguments in court cases, as well as other areas where linguistics meets the law. Through the study of language structure (sounds, words, and meaning), students gain an appreciation of the role of language in the law and in society, social justice issues around language, linguistic discrimination in legal contexts, and current and historical legislative debates around language use. Enrollment limited to first-year students.  HU, SO
TTh 9am-10:15am

* LING 0330a / ENGL 0133a, Words, Words, Words: The Structure and History of English Words  Peter Grund

Meggings. Perpendicular. Up. Ain’t. Eerily. Bae. The. These are all words in the English language, but, like all words, they have different meanings, functions, and social purposes; indeed, the meaning and function may be different for the same word depending on the context in which we use it (whether spoken or written). In this course, we explore the wonderful world of words. We look at how we create new words (and why), how we change the meaning of words, and how words have been lost (and revived) over time. As we do so, we look at debates over words and their meanings now (such as the feeling by some that ain’t is not a word at all) and historically (such as the distaste for subpeditals for ‘shoes’ in the sixteenth century), and how words can be manipulated to insult, hurt, and discriminate against others. We look at a wide range of texts by well-known authors (such as Shakespeare) as well as anonymous online bloggers, and we make use of online tools like the Google Ngram viewer and the Corpus of Historical American English to see how words change over time. At the end of the course, I hope you see how we make sophisticated use of words and how studying them opens up new ways for you to understand why other people use words the way they do and how you can use words for various purposes in your own speech and writing. Enrollment limited to first-year students.  HU
MW 11:35am-12:50pm