Observing ongoing change in present-day EnglishesLaajuus (5 cr)

Objective

Learning outcomes: On completion of the study unit the successful student will be able to: - observe present-day Englishes in relation to various long- and short-term diachronic processes - understand some recent and on-going grammatical changes in contemporary Englishes - make use of variationist corpus methodology in independent study - analyze language variation and change using corpus-based methods - plan and implement a small-scale empirical research that focuses on observing ongoing change (data collection and organization, basic statistical analyses of frequencies, interpreting, visualizing and reporting the results) The course develops the following work life skills: - Meaning-making, holistic management capability, information retrieval, presentation skills, language skills, reliability and punctuality, country and culture specialization, intercultural skills. Generic competences: digitalization, internationality, critical thinking, identification and development of expertise, interaction and communication

Content

Variationist corpus-based methodology, recent history of English, ongoing change, grammatical change, lexical variation, and typological trends

Qualifications

Basic studies

Materials

(c. 300 pages) Baker, Paul. 2009. The BE06 Corpus of British English and recent language change. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 14:3, 312–337. Leech, Geoffrey, Marianne Hundt, Christian Mair & Nicholas Smith. 2009. Change in Contemporary English. A Grammatical Study. (Studies in English Language). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (n. 150 sivua) Mair, Christian. 2006. Twentieth Century English. History, Variation and Standardization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (n. 100 sivua) Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt. 2009. Typological parameters of interlingual variability: Grammatical analyticity vs. syntheticity in varieties of English. Language Variation and Change 21:3, 319–353.

Further information

Teachers: Professor Time: 3rd – 5th year of studies Offering data: English language and culture (advanced studies), also MDP in Linguistic Data Sciences Key words: Language variation and change, corpus linguistics Campus: Joensuu Further information: Language of tuition: English

Execution methods

Lectures, hands-on exercises, and a small-scale independent empirical study

Accomplishment methods

Modes of study: Lectures and exercises (24h), independent work (111h). Evaluation criteria: Final report