Prof. Dr Maria Georgieva
Lectures: 30
Seminars: 30
ECTS credits: 6
The course aims to introduce students to the multiple ways of interaction between language and society and the role of social context in communication. In the first part, the course focuses on sociolinguistic variability in terms of users and uses of language and then moves on to the macro-sociolinguistic topics of language policy and planning, bilingualism and multilingualism and the EU policy of plurilingualism. The approach is student-oriented and involves autonomous reading and discussion of papers by key researchers in the field. During the seminar sessions students gain hands-on experience of sociolinguistic analysis by studying real life speech samples. In order to feel the practical significance of the knowledge they have acquired and develop sensitivity to the effect of social and cultural factors on communication, students are also required to conduct a small-scale field study on a fixed topic. Evaluation involves a mid-term test and public presentation of a portfolio. To do this course, students should have competence in general linguistics and pragmatics. The course is conducted in English.