PhD-course - ‘Bad language’: Sociopsychological-linguistic perspectives on linguistic attitudes, correctness, adequacy and aesthetics

The course ‘Bad language’: Sociopsychological-linguistic perspectives on linguistic attitudes, correctness, adequacy and aesthetics is for PhD students in sociolinguistics and related linguistic disciplines. It is a part of the PhD course program within the National Research School in Linguistics and Philology (http://nafs.uib.no), but is open to all PhD students.

Lecturers

Ulrich Ammon, Emeritus Professor of Linguistics of German with a focus on Sociolinguistics, Universität Duisburg-Essen, Germany,

Lars-Gunnar Andersson, professor of Modern Swedish, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and

Peter Trudgill, professor II, Universitetet i Agder, Emeritus Professor of English Linguistics, Fribourg University, Switzerland.

The lessons

In his part of the course, Ulrich Ammon will start with questions of a typology of languages and language varieties according to their status and function within a community or society and show how such a typology relates to linguistic attitudes and judgments of correctness, adequacy and aesthetics. He will then exemplify these general considerations for the rank order of language types extending from “the world language” to the most peripheral minority languages, for asymmetric pluricentric languages (with a hierarchy of different standard varieties), and for standard varieties versus non-standard regional and social dialects. He will also always present suggestions towards more fairness and linguistic justice with respect to these discrepancies.

Lars-Gunnar Andersson will focus on where attitudes are found and how they function, what people praise or, more commonly, condemn in language use, how the official language policy has changed in the last 50 years, and discuss ways of studying swearing and, in particular, attitudes to swearing.

Peter Trudgill will be examining the theme of the relative degrees of adequacy, logic, correcteness and complexity demonstrated by different languages and dialects. He will be considering research on these topics from the perspectives of sociolinguistics, linguistic typology, and the social psychology of language. The discussion will range not only over the attitudes held towards these issues by lay people but also over those held by academic linguists.

The lecturers - a short presentation

Ulrich Ammon has taught at the Universities of Wesleyan (Middletown, Conn), Tübingen, and Duisburg-Essen. He has been a visiting professor at the Universities of North Carolina (Chapel Hill), Dokkyo (Soka, Japan), Sydney and Canberra (both Australia), and Vienna (Austria) as well as a short-term visiting professor at universities in China, Egypt, Greece, Hungary, India, Italy, Namibia, Russia, Turkey, and Ukraine. His main interests are languages in the times of globalization, language policy, status and functional types of languages and language varieties, pluricentric languages, and the sociology of regional dialects. These interests are represented in numerous articles as well as books such as Die internationale Stellung der deutschen Sprache (W. de Gruyter), Die deutsche Sprache in Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz (W. de Gruyter), Ist Deutsch noch internationale Wissenschaftssprache? (W. de Gruyter), English as an Academic Language in Europe (together with Grant McConnell, P. Lang). He keeps being busy as the director of various research projects and by teaching in his university’s Ph.D. program and guest lecturing.

Lars-Gunnar Andersson has worked at the University of Gothenburg for many years, first in the department of general linguistics and later in the department of Swedish language. His research areas has been syntax, semantics, dialectology and sociolinguistics with a bit of African languages and language typology. Besides his academic work he has for the last 10 years worked with a weekly radio program discussing and answering questions about language, not least questions of correctness in language. Apart from some books in Swedish he has published Logic in Linguistics, Cambridge University Press (with Jens Allwood and Östen Dahl), Bad Language, Blackwells (with Peter Trudgill) and Languages in Botswana, Longmans, Botswana (with Tore Janson).

Peter Trudgill has taught at the Universities of Reading and Essex in England; and in Switzerland at the Universities of Lausanne and Fribourg. Currently, as well as being Professor II at UiA, Peter Trudgill is Emeritus Professor of English Linguistics at the University of Fribourg; Honorary Professor of Sociolinguistics at the University of East Anglia, England; and Adjunct Professor of Linguistics at the Research Centre for Linguistic Typology at La Trobe University, Melbouren, Australia. As well as English, he has also worked on Greek, Albanian, Norwegian, and Spanish. His main interests are in sociolinguistics and dialectology, and his major publications include Sociolinguistics: an introduction to language and society (Penguin); Dialects in contact (Blackwell); and New-dialect formation: the inevitability of colonial Englishes (Edinburgh University Press).

REGISTRATION
If you wish to register for the course or have any other questions, please contact Helge Omdal (helge.omdal@uia.no) as soon as possible.

Deadline for registration: May 05, 2010

ACCOMMODATION

In Kristiansand, there are a number of hotels at variable prices (search the web). The Norge Rica Partner Hotel, Dronningens gate 5, tel. +47 3817 40 00, has reserved a few rooms for our course period (agreed price NOK 860 per night). The hotel is centrally located in Kristiansand, and the airport bus stops outside the hotel. From there it takes about half an hour to walk (brisk walk) to our campus at Gimlemoen. Also, there is a good bus connection. See the map (kristiansandkart.pdf)

Kristiansandkart

READING LIST:

The participants will get a list of recommended literature when they have registered for the PhD course.

Number of participants: 20 - 25 PhD students

Course leader:
Professor Helge Omdal
helge.omdal@uia.no

Institutt for nordisk og mediefag
Fakultet for humaniora og pedagogikk

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