ENGL 560 is an introductory survey to the language theories that support various approaches to language in the Language and Rhetoric track. We’ll work through an introduction to systemic functional linguistics, sociolinguistics, cognitive linguistics and a brief survey of Chomsky’s work as a point of contrast with the work of sociolinguistics and discourse analysis. This course is a very good grounding for linguistic approaches to discourse analysis. Assignments will include short papers on each approach and an extended annotated bibliography on the topic of your choice; no seminar papers—this is a true survey. We’ll begin the quarter with a language autobiography. It would be a good idea if everyone had an introductory linguistics textbook of the kind we use in our undergraduate course, ENGL 370 (Finegan, 5th ed, for my course; there are others), for reference throughout the quarter.

TEXTS:
Chambers, Sociolinguistic Theory
Croft and Cruse, Cognitive Linguistics
Eggins, An Introduction to Systemic Function Linguistics 2nd ed. (Continuum)
Smith, Neil, Chomsky: Ideas and Ideals