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Instructors: PD Dr. habil. Martina Lampert
Event type:
online: Proseminar
Displayed in timetable as:
05.008.160
Hours per week:
2
Language of instruction:
Englisch
Min. | Max. participants:
- | 45
Registration group: Engl. Ling. 160
Priority scheme: Senatsrichtlinie
Requirements / organisational issues:
Participants should have attended the Introduction to English Linguistics and (ideally) Spoken English.
To fulfill Active Participation in this digital course, participants will have to thoroughly read an introductory textbook, divided up into a week-by-week reading assignments that include some written tasks, such as answering study questions or write a short reading report.
To obtain credit, a summary of a research article will have to be handed in: Everybody will be free to choose an article from a pool of texts according to their personal interests, thus expanding their knowledge on a topic covered in the textbook.
Contents:
This proseminar will provide a solid survey of the very stage in the historical evolution of English that is of immediate relevance for what might be called Modern Standard English. And this period is also deeply connected with the global spread of the English language—the ‘lingua franca of the modern age.’
In this class, we will especially focus on the pertinent and prominent themes underlying the public discourse during the period under scrutiny: Among them are ‘hot’ issues like the standardization and codification of English in the domains of pronunciation, grammar, and the lexicon, along with their ensuing instruction in the emerging school system—all of which gave rise to vivid debates and hard negotiation within and across diverse groups in the English society at large. These discussions also included the status of the emerging national variants beyond the ’model’ variety now known as English English.
The class will also not lose sight of another defining characteristic of English prominently surfacing during the Late Modern time: Though it is immediately associated with the standard national variety—“a dialect with an army and a navy,” as the saying goes—and, thus, tacitly conceived as a holistic and unified ’system,’ the English language has never been a linguistic monolith but a collection of discourses that unmistakably document variation: regional and social, in registers and in styles, and all are affected by various and diverging sociocultural forces.
In this proseminar, then, special attention will be placed on the changing (or, indeed, not so changing) attitudes of contemporary language experts toward what has been considered the ‘correct’ use of language, which in fact turns out to be essentially relative and debatable: This aspect proves of utmost significance since many of these views (or rather ideologies) have remained issues of debate—not only in current university courses (like essay classes), but even more pronounced, it seems, in the foreign language classroom.
In light of these observations, this course covers a highly sensible topic and is of consequential relevance for future teachers.
Recommended reading list:
All texts will be available shortly before the start of the term on https://lms.uni-mainz.de.
Additional information:
The course documents will include introductory reading materials, PowerPoint Presentations to introduce and survey the course topic as well as a pool of texts for participants’ final task.
Digital teaching:
The class will be entirely digital, using the LMS-software of JGU, and all course materials will be made accessible for participants in pdf form.
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