NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF MODERN LANGUAGES

Department of English
BS Hons 8th Semester

Course Outline: Sociolinguistics & Psycholinguistics

Course Code: 803 Marks: 100
Core Text: Sociolinguistics: An Introduction by Peter Trudgill
(New York: Penguin Books, 1974)
The Articulate Mammal by Jean Aitcheson3rd Ed
(London: Unwin Hayman, 1976)
MID TERM (Marks: 30)
1. What is language?
2. Dialects, Sociolect, Idiolect
3. Standard Language
4. RP
5. Kinship System
6. Taboos
7. Langue Varieties
8. Social Stratification
9. Social Class
10. Langue and Gender
11. Restricted and Elaborated Codes
12. Linguistic Purity
13. Ethnicity
14. Pidgins and Creoles
15. Extinct and Endangered Languages

16. Introduction to Psycholinguistics

 What is language and mind connection
 The history and methods of psycholinguistics
 Models in Psycholinguistics
 Where did language come from?
 Do Animals have language?
17. The Foundations of Language
 The biological basis of language
 The cognitive basis of language
 The social basis of language
 Relation between language and thought
18. Language Development
  Introduction
 The language acquisition device
 How children develop language
 Phonological development
 Lexical and Semantic development
 Syntactic development
19. Language Recognition
 Recognizing visual words
 What makes word recognition easier (or harder)
 Models of visual word recognition
 Reading & Recognition
 The writing system
 A model of reading
 The processes of normal reading
 Recognizing speech
 Models of speech recognition
20. Language Comprehension
 Comprehension: Intro
 Memory for text and inferences
 Reference and ambiguity
 Models of text processing
 Individual differences in comprehension skills
21. Language Production
 Introduction
 Slips of tongue
 Syntactic planning
 Lexicalization
 Phonological encoding
22. Language and Brain
 Language parts in Brain
 Language Disorders
23. Neuroscience & Language
 Neuroscience of language learning: Critical period
 Neuroscience of language recognition/ comprehension
 Neuroscience of language/ text processing
 Neuroscience of speech production

Assignment/ Presentation (Marks: 20)

Recommended Readings:
a. Fromkin, V.Rodman, R. Hyams,N.(2003) An Introduction to Language. USA:
Thompson.
b. The Linguistic Encyclopedia