12647 - Sociolinguistics (1)

Academic Year 2022/2023

  • Teaching Mode: Traditional lectures
  • Campus: Bologna
  • Corso: First cycle degree programme (L) in Humanities (cod. 8850)

    Also valid for First cycle degree programme (L) in Communication Sciences (cod. 8885)

Learning outcomes

At the end of the course, the students will be acquainted with main topics in sociolinguistics and will gain advanced knowledge of sociolinguistic variation of Italian. Moreover, students will acquire basic knowledge of some data analysis tools widely used in sociolinguistics. With this competence, students will be aware of sociolinguistic variation of languages (specifically of Italian) and will be familiar with description patterns of sociolinguistic variation. Moreover, they will be able to use categories and methods of sociolinguistic in order to describe and analyze language facts.

Course contents

The following issues will be addressed and dealt with during the course:

- The sociolinguistic approach to language facts

- Language and society

- With special reference to Italian: the dimensions of variation of a language, the interaction between language and social variables, the linguistic features which characterize the linguistic varieties

- The relation between language and dialect

- The notions of rule, exception and error and their relative nature (we will focus on communicative consequences of errors, on the relation between social and linguistic errors, on the role of the context in the perception of errors, etc.)

Readings/Bibliography

- Berruto, G. / Cerruti, M. (2015), Manuale di sociolinguistica, Torino, Utet

- Grandi, N. (a cura di) (2015), La grammatica e l'errore, Bologna BUP

-Lessons' notes

Non attending students will read also one of the following volumes:

Fiorentino, G. (2019), Variabilità linguistica, Roma, Carocci; 

Miola, E. (2020), Che cos'è un rebus, Roma, Carocci

(for attending students these books are optional)

Teaching methods

Lectures.

Assessment methods

The final exam is an oral colloquium dealing with the course contents; its aim it to evaluate the critical skills and methodological knowledge gained by the student.

Reaching a clear view of all the course topics as well as using a correct language terminology will be valued with top marks. The capacity of building autonomous paths to connect different topics of the course will be appreciated.
Mnemonic knowledge of the course topics or not completely appropriate terminology will lead to a ‘pass’.
Unknown topics or inappropriate terminology use will be valued, depending on the seriousness of the omissions, with minimal or insufficient rankings.

All the students will be asked to start from a subject freely chosen by them.

All the students must register for the exam with Almaesami. The exam can be arranged in different rounds depending on the number of subscribers.

Teaching tools

In the lectures I will make use of PowerPoint presentations that will be made available to the students on the Virtuale website.

Office hours

See the website of Emanuele Miola