76-851 Topics in Language Study Units: 9,12 Department: English Cross-listed: 76-451 Related URLs: http://hss.cmu.edu/HTML/departments/engl GRADUATE COURSE In this unsettled age, when large portions of the earths surface are being ravaged by industrialism, when on several continents indigenous peoples are being forceably uprooted, when philosophers and poets (and even the odd sociologist or two) are asserting that attachments to geographical localities contribute fundamentally to the formation of personal and social identities, when new forms of environmental awareness are being more radically charted and urgently advocated than ever in the past it is unfortunate that [we] seldom study what people make of places. (Keith H. Basso, Wisdom Sits in Places) The claim is sometimes made that place is no longer important in human life, since we spend more and more time in virtual spaces and participate more and more in global economic and social networks. In this course we will test this claim, first by reading and discussing theories of place and space from critical theory and cultural geography, and then by reading about and carrying out case studies exploring intersections between language and place. Our methods will include bibliographic and archival research, discourse analysis, and ethnographic techniques. Students projects will draw on your professional and scholarly interests and expertise, and the places you study can range from the local (a workplace, for example) to the global (the internet, for example). My project, and our first case study, explores the changing (but persistent) roles of regional US dialects in the formation and use of identities.

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