CQ614
Language Policies and the Politics of Language Identity
0.5 Credit

This course examines the impact of larger structural forces like colonization and globalization on language use, language choice and processes of language change. By focusing on recent educational and language policies in some "post-colonial" Creole-speaking countries, and by analyzing the popular reaction to them, debates about standard/vernacular languages, linguistic/national identities are both a reflection and a component of profound social struggles in those asymmetrical societies are examined. The political and social dimensions of those educational/linguistic debates are considered through key theories/approaches in the fields of sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology and Creolistics.