Course Description
Provides a broad overview of the social and institutional factors that affect language use in German-speaking heritage communities in the United States. Emphasis is placed on quantifiable methods for correlating extra-linguistic factors with observable changes in language use over time.
Athena Title
Heritage German
Prerequisite
GRMN 2002 or GRMN 2110 or GRMN 2140H
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
General Competence •Understanding of the basic correlation between social structure and language use. •Understanding of the function of social institutions and social networks within a linguistic community. •Understanding of the interaction between social factors and language acquisition, change, and shift. Specialized knowledge •Broad overview of the theoretical approaches and experimental methods to studying language change, as caused by language- external factors. •Close familiarity with primary sources used to study social structure within German heritage/minority linguistic communities. •Close familiarity with common experimental protocols for measuring language use within German heritage/minority communities. Specialized abilities •The ability to track and model quantifiable changes in the demographics of German heritage/minority language communities over time. •The ability to model language use in a heritage/minority community at a given point in time, specific to the German context. •The ability to correlate language-external (social) factors with events of language change and/or language shift, specifically the shift from German to English as the socially dominant language. •The ability to reconstruct probable language use for earlier historical stages of a variety of German, based on language- external (social) evidence.
Topical Outline
1. Language change in the context of language contact 2. Migration, urbanization, and language change in the German(ic) context 3. Demographics: Quantifying migration and language contact 4. Language acquisition in a mixed-input environment (e.g., German/English, or between multiple, non-standard varieties of German) 5. Innovation and Typological Change: Language change not directly inherited from (multiple) input varieties 6. Principles of language shift to a socially dominant language, e.g., from German to English in the United States 7. Community Theory: The role of social institutions in language acquisition/change/shift 8. Social Network Theory: The role of social interaction in language acquisition/change/shift 9. Linguistic Substrates: Linguistic remnants of (Germanic) minority languages in socially dominant varieties