PhD Course: "Perceptual Dialectology and Perceptual Sociolinguistics"

PhD Course: "Perceptual Dialectology and Perceptual Sociolinguistics" 3 ECTS

Universitetet i Agder (UiA), Kristiansand April 21–25, 2008

Deadline for registration: March 31, 2008
If you wish to register for the course or have any other questions, please contact Helge Omdal no later than March 31, 2008.

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

Dennis Preston, University Distinguished Professor, Department of English, Michigan State University, USA

Rune Røsstad, postdoctoral fellow, Department of Nordic and Media Studies, University of Agder.

In his part of the course, Peter Trudgill will be concentrating on perceptions of language varieties as being dialects or languages or something in betweeen, and the degree to which language status for a particular variety is or can be socially constructed. There will be an examination of how language status can be lost as well as won, and of the historical, cultural, social and political forces that are involved in this kind of development, especially in the context of globalisation and localisation.

Dennis Preston will look at how people attend to and process linguistic signals and the links those signals have to social groups as they determine what attitudes they have towards language and its users. He will outline various approaches to determining the content of such attitudes towards regional varieties (in a perceptual dialectology) as well as newer approaches from sociophonetic experimentalism and the analysis of folk discourses about language. In conclusion, he will try to show how the study of language regard is important to any program of study of language variation and change.

Rune Røsstad will present theory and data from his dissertation, which is built upon an investigation of the relationship between perceptions of language and spoken language ( Den språklege røynda. Om oppfatta og realisert talemål i austre Vest-Agder, 2005, with a summary in English). The investigation represents an alternative approach to non-linguists’ perceptions of language in use, which comprised interviewing 44 Norwegian informants about language spoken locally. The data from the interviews suggests that external (i.e. non-mental) factors play a prominent role in the formation of their perceptions of language.

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 La Trobe University, 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). Peter Trudgill is currently professor II at Høgskolen i Agder, and Emeritus Professor of English Linguistics, Fribourg University, Sveits.

Dennis Preston is University Distinguished Professor of English, Michigan State University and has been visiting professor at the Universities of Indiana Southeast, Hawaii, Arizona, and Michigan and Fulbright Senior Researcher in Poland and Brazil. He was Co-Director of the 1990 TESOL Institute and Director of the 2003 Linguistic Society of America Institute, both at Michigan State. He was President of the American Dialect Society (2001-2) and served on the Executive Boards of that society, the International Conference on Methods in Dialectology, New Ways of Analyzing Variation, and the Linguistic Society of America, as well as the editorial boards of Language, Impact, International Journal of Applied Linguistics, Kwartalkik Filologiczny, Journal of Sociolinguistics, Compass, and as a reader for numerous other journals, publishers, and granting agencies. His work focuses on sociolinguistics, dialectology, ethnography, and minority language and variety education. He is perhaps best known for the revitalization of folk linguistics, particularly perceptual dialectology, and attempts to provide variationist accounts of second language acquisition. He has directed four recent National Science Foundation grants, two in folk linguistics and two in language variation and change. He is invited frequently for presentations in both academic and popular venues. His most recent book-length publications are, with Nancy Niedzielski, Folk Linguistics (2000), with Daniel Long, A Handbook of Perceptual Dialectology, Volume II (2002), Needed Research in American Dialects (2003), and, with Brian Joseph and Carol G. Preston, Linguistic diversity in Michigan and Ohio (2005). He is a fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and was awarded the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Polish Republic in 2004. He is a recipient of the Michigan State Distinguished Faculty Award and the Paul Varg Alumni Award of the College of Arts and Letters also at Michigan State.

Rune Røsstad is postdoctoral fellow, Department of Nordic and media studies, University of Agder. His PhD-dissertation was built upon an investigation of the relationship between perceptions of language and spoken language ( Den språklege røynda. Om oppfatta og realisert talemål i austre Vest-Agder, 2005, with a summary in English).

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