Credit Points 10

Legacy Code 101450

Coordinator Stacey Sherwood Opens in new window

Description This subject is designed to develop students' interest in language and society and give them an understanding and appreciation of variation in language (accents, dialects) and language change, language planning, as well as the interdependent relationship between language learning, communicative competence and cultural practices, both in the Australian context and also in a more global context. It also aims to show students how this subject fits in with other language and linguistics-related disciplines, e.g. Linguistics, Bilingualism and Biculturalism, Second Language Acquisition.

School Humanities & Comm Arts

Discipline Linguistics

Student Contribution Band HECS Band 1 10cp

Check your fees via the Fees page.

Level Undergraduate Level 3 subject

Equivalent Subjects LANG 1023 - Sociolinguistics

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of this subject, students should be able to:

1. Reflect and discuss language variation in its complex social context.
2. Investigate variation in language empirically.
3. Evaluate the significance of language variation and multilingualism with a particular focus on Australia.
4. Apply principles and approaches to sociolinguistics in the contexts of language policy and planning, communication and education.

Subject Content

- Overview of The field of sociolinguistics and its connections to other fields of linguistics and other disciplines.
- Dimension of variation in language: social, stylistic and regional.
- language variation in Australia.
- language variation and its relation to language change.
- Multilingualism and language variation.
- language variation and society, including education.