‘Not to be a sexist/racist or anything, but …’
‘She just sounds gay, you know?.’
‘I like your accent! It is adorable.’
‘Your English is good!’
These are all forms of language infused with preconceptions, ideologies, and – in a sense – prejudice (yes, even the last two, positive-sounding ones). But how so? And what do we do about this? These are two main questions to be addressed by the course. In ENGL1034 Language and prejudice, we will first confront the essentiality of language ideology, our reality where language is always interactionally and socially embedded, motivated, and is anything but arbitrary. In this spirit we will set out to explore fundamental concepts that underpin language (ideology) as a continual process of naturalisation and denaturalisation of our linguistic formulations: concepts such as representation, nomenclaturism vs social constructivism/structuralism, indexicality and iconicity, etc. We will then examine how ideology plays out in a series of case studies, touching on topics like standard English, linguistic profiling, accenticism, language and nationality, politically correct language and extreme forms of language. By the end of the course, we will develop a more robust awareness of the permeation of prejudice in our daily lives, in politics, and even in linguistics as a proper discipline.
Language and prejudice, language ideology, rationalistic and nationalistic regimes of language, language and discrimination, political/linguistic correctness, extremist and hate speech
- To introduce students to the social and thus ideologically-imbued nature of language from which prejudice arises.
- To offer a theoretical framework of semiotics to students which they can utilize and reflect upon when dealing with real-life examples of linguistic prejudice.
- To unpack complex linguistic issues and debates engendered by language ideology and linguistic prejudice, spanning the various fields of linguistics, philosophy, language anthropology and politics.
- To motivate students to inspect more case studies and to develop a higher awareness of the embeddedness of language in social unification/differentiation and inclusion/exclusion.
By the end of the course, students are expected to
1. be acquainted with the indispensability of the non-arbitrary, socially-motivated nature of language, and how it serves as the basis for language ideology and prejudice.
2. be reflective on the prevalent semiotic concepts that undergird language ideology and prejudice.
3. have critically analyzed linguistic debates rooted in their daily, social lives by applying the concepts they have learnt.
4. have put together a creative project on the topic of language and prejudice by consolidating their course learning and actively looking into real-life examples.
The course consists of weekly 2-hour lecture sessions. Two sessions will be reserved for in-class presentations and discussions. An end-of-term, in-class quiz will take place in the final session. There will be no tutorials.
|
Short Reflection |
20% |
|
Project Presentation (group-based, individually-graded) |
35% |
|
End-of-term Quiz (open-book, in-class) |
30% |
|
Participation |
15% |
Readings will be taken out of Representation: Cultural representations and signifying practices (Hall et al., 2013), Regimes of language: Ideologies, polities, and identities (Kroskrity, 2000), and On the offensive: Prejudice in language past and present (Stollznow, 2020). etc. The course will also make use of academic journal articles and online articles.
Weekly digital readings will be uploaded to the course Moodle page and students are encouraged to find additional materials via the HKU Library digital databases.