Language Sciences is looking for two co-instructors to teach the course Living Language: Science and Society in September 2023. Cross-listed across six faculties, the Living Language course is a 400-level course, initially conceptualized as a transition-out course for advanced students from across the university to reflect on their respective fields of study through the lens of language sciences.
The course works best when co-taught by two instructors from different disciplines, in order to provide students with a wider range of perspectives. Past instructor teams have included faculty from Psychology and Anthropology / First Nations and Endangered Languages, and Psychology and English Language and Literature.
Through guest lectures, discussion, and team-based project work, at the end of the course students will be able to:
- Identify the characteristics of language and demonstrate how these shape the ways we think and interact with one another and our communities
- Critically assess how language is used in your chosen field of study
- Reflect on and integrate what you have learned in your chosen field of study with language sciences in critical and creative ways
- Use your enriched understanding of how language functions to communicate your field’s insights to broader audiences
- Strengthen your understanding of learning and listening beyond your discipline
- Recognize the power of language in science and society
- Collaborate with your peers across disciplinary lines
Topics from past years include:
|
Language Diversity |
Anthropology and Language Revitalization |
| Language Acquisition |
Language and social justice |
| Language and Cognition | Bilingualism and identity |
| Sociolinguistics | Visibility and signification |
| Writing Systems | Language policy |
| Paralinguistic systems | Signed Languages |
| Academic modes of communication | Language discrimination and the legal system |
| Language and technology | Language and health |
Learn about the course from students' perspectives:
- May 2021 - ‘We can work with language towards a more just society,’ Living Language Alumni Q&A
- May 2021 – ‘There is still so much we don’t know about language and how it interacts with culture, politics, art’, Living Language Alumna Q&A
- May 2020 – Pupa versus puppies: How language can be used to manipulate and other lessons from the Living Language course
- May 2019 – Podcasts, policy, and the president: interdisciplinary course returns to teach the power of language
LangSci will provide at least one course buyout to support the instructors, as well as funding for one senior TA for the course (call TBA in Spring 2023) and administrative support for guest speaker travel and honoraria, organizing AV services, supporting course-based research BREB applications, and compiling course materials ahead of September 2023, among other tasks as needed.
Feel free to contact Ella Fund-Reznicek and/or Janet Werker with questions about the course.
Email language.sciences@ubc.ca (cc Janet Werker, jwerker@psych.ubc.ca) by Thursday, November 10th with:
- CV
- One to two paragraphs outlining your goals for the course and the reasons for your interest in teaching it.
Recent syllabi for the course are available on request.