We all speak differently and at least some of this variation is correlated with a speaker's social characteristics (e.g. age, gender, ethnicity). But why? This course focuses on socially-conditioned linguistic variation, people's attitudes toward it, and the meanings behind it. We will discuss developments in both social theory and methodology. Through applying the concepts covered, students will conduct individual research projects addressing some question of relevance to sociolinguistics.

This course will give students hands-on experience with conducting sociolinguistic interviews and analyzing sociolinguistic variables. For the final project, students are required to conduct a small-scale study investigating some aspect of sociolinguistic variation.

There are no prerequisities for this course, but students must have current graduate standing at UHM or have received prior consent from the instructor.

Grama, J. and B. Winter. 2010. The Duality of a Homosexual Epithet in Sports. Proceedings of 14th Annual Graduate Student Conference of the College of Languages, Linguistics, and Literature.

Kirtley, M.J. 2010. Making a Soldier out of a Civilian: Linguistic Identity in the U.S. Military. Paper to be presented at the American Dialect Society's Language Variation and Change in the United States and Canada 2010. Chicago, November 4-7, 2010.