1. Historical Sociolinguistics

     Language of instruction: English

     Instructor: mr. sc. Alexander D. Hoyt (alex.hoyt@ffzg.hr)

2. Number of classroom hours:       

    30 seminar (90 minutes weekly)

    15 exercises (fieldwork in archives, according to students' schedules)

    45 hours total

Class meets on Tuesdays, 17:45-19:15, room A314

First class meets on Tuesday, 11 October 2011

Semester: Winter 2011/2012

3.    ECTS credits: 5

4.     Course Description:

The goals of this course are twofold. The first goal is to introduce students to the field of historical sociolinguistics, in which scholars studying the history of individual languages combine the methods of historical linguistics with those of sociolinguistics (especially variationist, or “Labovian”, sociolinguistics) in an attempt to reconsruct processes of language change in their social context. Research in this field tends to focus on texts that most closely represent spoken language (e.g., personal letters, theatrical plays, and court testimony transcriptions). The majority of historical sociolinguistic research has been done on Early Modern English, the largest project by far being the Corpus of Early English Correspondence (CEEC), a Finnish project headed by Terttu Nevalainen. Most other research in the field has been done on northern European languages such as Swedish, German, Dutch, and French. The second goal is to give students some “hands-on” experience. They will be shown how a completed digital corpus (e.g., the CEEC) can be used for basic research. In addition, students will participate in the construction of a sociolinguistic corpus by transcribing and analyzing personal letters written (or received) in Croatia in the late 1800s and early 1900s. It is expected that many of the students will have limited knowledge of Croatian. These students will work together with Croatian speakers, transcribing either letters written in Croatian, or letters written by Croatians in some other language that they know better (e.g., German, Italian). Although the primary focus of this project is linguistic, students specializing in other fields, such as history, sociology, communications, and political science, should also find the course interesting from the socio-historical point of view, because the letters studied will give them insight into the everyday problems and experiences of people living in Croatia a century ago.

            Course Units:

Introduction to Course and explanation of semester-long practical assignment. As mentioned above, the practical assignment will consist of transcribing a set of personal letters written in Croatia in the late 1800s and early 1900s for use in a linguistic corpus, as well as a report in which some aspect of those letters is analyzed. This report does not have to be linguistic in nature, but can be written from the point of view of some other field of knowledge (e.g., history, sociology, communications, etc.)
- Origins of field: traditional historical linguistics
- Origins of field: variationist socioliguistics

- The application of sociolinguistic methods to historical data: weaknesses and strengths

- Early research: Romaine’s study of relative markers in Middle Scots

- Nevalainen: Building the Corpus of Early English Correspondence

- Selected Studies based on the CEEC

- Selected Research on languages other than English

- Real time vs. apparent time

- Gender

- Social Stratification

- Regional Variation

- Historical Patterning of Sociolinguistic Variation

- Student presentations of research projects

5.         General and specific knowledge: Students will acquire a basic knowledge of the theories and methods of historical sociolinguistics. In addition, through the practical assignment, they will learn the practical problems and skills related to compiling a linguistic corpus based on personal correspondence.

6.         Form of instruction: 1 hour of lectures + 1 hour of seminar classes (limited to 20 students)

7.         Students will be evaluated based on two criteria: (1) attendance & participation in class and (2) written & oral presentation of their semester-long projects.

8.         Literature

Required reading:

Nevalainen, Terttu & Raumolin-Brunberg, Helena. 2003. Historical sociolinguistics: Language Change in Tudor and Stuart England. London: Pearson Education.

Supplemental reading:

Barton, David & Hall, Nigel (eds.). 1999. Letter writing as a social practice (Studies in Written Language and Literacy 9). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Brozović, Dalibor i Pavle Ivić (1988), Jezik, srpskohrvatski/hrvatskosrpski, hrvatski ili srpski. Zagreb: Jugoslavenski i leksikografski zavod “Miroslav Krleža”.

Lass, Roger. 1997. Historical linguistics and language change. (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics 81). Cambridge: C.U.P.

Milan Moguš. 1995. A History of the Croatian Language: Toward a Common Standard. Zagreb: Nakladni zavod Globus. Translated by Alexander D. Hoyt & Lelija Sočanac.

Nevalainen, Terttu & Raumolin-Brunberg, Helena (eds.). 1996. Sociolinguistics and language history: Studies based on the Corpus of Early English Correspondence (Language and Computers: Studies in Practical Linguistics 15). Amsterdam – Atlanta, GA: Rodopi.

Nevalainen, Terttu & Tanskanen, Sanna-Kaisa (eds.). Letter writing (Benjamins Current Topics 1). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. [previously published in the Journal of Historical Pragmatics, 5:2 (2004)]

Romaine, Suzanne. 1982. Socio-historical linguistics: Its status and methodology (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics 34). Cambridge: C.U.P.

9.         Evaluation of instruction: The students will evaluate the quality of instruction by means of a standard questionnaire.