Sociolinguistics II: Deviance, Dystopia, And Democracy (LING82) Syllabus

This course builds upon foundational concepts in sociolinguistic theory to examine discourses of news and entertainment media, across science fiction and politics. Drawing upon contributions in applied linguistics, media studies, cultural studies, and archival research, we ask which realities are mirrored in our everyday language and in the fictional and sensationalized worlds we engage in through the media we consume. What role does science fiction play in our explorations of social difference, deviance, control, disability, sexuality, and normativity? Can science fiction assist the goals of social justice and democracy? How does language surface in the biopolitics of human and non-humans? Together, we will explore key film and television, and select novels by authors Max Brooks, Octavia Butler, and Philip K. Dick. Students will learn advanced methods and theories in multimodal critical discourse analysis and digital humanities

Zombie Analysis For Web

Part 1 of assignment - Authoring your critical discourse analysis on zombies (Essay 3): 800-word essay that examines language and communication as used in Max Brooks’ novel World War Z. This essay comprises your original contribution to the [ZOMBIES REIMAGINED] project. Part 2 of the assignment - Create a Timeline or StoryMap to accompany your essay as a visual aid and presentation for readers. This animated visual presentation will be published with your essay to the project website. Part 3 of the assignment - After revision, use Markdown language to ready your essay for upload to the project webpage. To access the webpage, sign into your Github account, access prose.io, and upload your essay (in Markdown) with any images

Anthropological Linguistics (LING21, ANTH020N) Syllabus

Anthropological Linguistics course description:Communication and culture mutually define one another across communities worldwide. Human linguistic diversity, language contact and language change, and face-to-face communication continue to be key areas of inquiry for both linguistics and anthropology. Colonialism, globalization, mobility, and new technologies are changing the way we transmit and conceive of cultural knowledge, community, and our selves and the natural environment. In this course we draw attention to codeswitching, creoles, language endangerment, and constructed languages as reflections of our changing societies. We also address the ethics of fieldwork as a means of investigating these important social phenomena at the interfaces of language/ecology, language/identity, Global North/South

Getting Started With COCA

In this assignment, students will learn basic methods in corpus linguistics, an emerging field at the intersection of humanities and quantitative social science. They will learn how to search large English language corpora (e.g., the 900 million word Cambridge International Corpus) to look for otherwise hidden patterns of language use. They will be able to track the emergence of new words, shifts in meaning in existing words, and note the obsolescence of some words. They will interpret their findings in light of how language usage reflects societal attitudes and social change

L2 Learners\u27 Sensitivity To Semantic And Morphophonological Information On Swahili Nouns

Previous research demonstrates that L2 learners are sensitive to morphophonological and semantic information regarding grammatical gender in European languages (e.g., Spinner & Juffs, 2008). In this study we examine the use of morphophonological and semantic information by two groups of English-speaking learners acquiring Swahili gender (noun class). The results of an oral agreement-marking task, a written gender assignment task, and interviews indicate that learners are sensitive to morphophonological information regarding gender in Swahili. The findings for semantic information are more complex; learners appear to be sensitive to animacy but not to other “minor” semantic information such as tree or active body part. We propose the Semantic Core Hypothesis, which suggests that core semantic principles such as biological sex, animacy and humanness may be more easily accessible to L2 learners than other semantic principles

Embodied Difference: Divergent Bodies In Public Discourse

Focusing on the body as a visual and discursive platform across public space, we study marginalization as a sociocultural practice and hegemonic schema. Whereas mass incarceration and law enforcement readily feature in discussions of institutionalized racism, we differently highlight understudied sites of normalization and exclusion. Our combined effort centers upon physical contexts (skeletons, pageant stages, gentrifying neighborhoods), discursive spaces (medical textbooks, legal battles, dance pedagogy, vampire narratives) and philosophical arenas (morality, genocide, physician-assisted suicide, cryonic preservation, transfeminism) to deconstruct seemingly intrinsic connections between body and behavior, Whiteness and normativity

Differences in biomechanical determinants of ACL injury risk in Change of Direction tasks between males and females: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Background Change of direction (COD) movements are associated with non-contact anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries in multidirectional sports. Females appear at increased risk compared to males, which could be attributable to whole body kinematic strategies and greater multiplanar knee joint loads (KJLs) during COD which can increase ACL loading. Objective The aim of this systematic review and meta-analysis was to examine and quantitatively synthesise the evidence for differences between males and females regarding KJLs and their biomechanical determinants (whole body kinematic strategies determining KJLs) during COD tasks. Methods Databases including SPORTDiscus, Web of Science, and PubMed were systematically searched (July 2021–June 2023) for studies that compared differences in knee joint loads and biomechanical determinants of KJLs during COD between males and females. Inclusion criteria were: (1) females and males with no prior history of ACL injury (18–40 years); (2) examined biomechanical determinants of KJLs and/ or KJLs during COD tasks > 20°; (3) compared ≥ 1 outcome measure between males and females. Studies published between 2000 and 2023 examining a cutting task > 20° with a preceding approach run that compared KJLs or the whole body multiplanar kinematics associated with them, between sexes, using three-dimensional motion analysis. Results This meta-analysis included 17 studies with a pooled sample size of 451 participants (227 males, 224 females). Meta-analysis revealed females displayed significantly less peak knee flexion during stance (SMD: 0.374, 95% CI 0.098–0.649, p = 0.008, I2: 0%); greater knee abduction at initial contact (IC) (SMD: 0.687, 95% CI 0.299–1.076, p = 0.001, I2: 55%); less hip internal rotation (SMD: 0.437, 95% CI 0.134–0.741, p = 0.005, I2: 34%) and hip abduction at IC (SMD: −0.454, 95% CI 0.151–0.758, p = 0.003, I2: 33%). No significant differences were observed between males and females for any internal or externally applied KJLs. All retrieved studies failed to control for strength, resistance training or skill history status. Conclusion No differences were observed in KJLs between males and females despite females displaying greater knee abduction at IC and less peak knee flexion during the stance phase of CODs, which are visual characteristics of non-contact ACL injury. Further research is required to examine if this translates to a similar injury risk, considering morphological differences in strain characteristics of the ACL between males and females. This observation may in part explain the disproportionate ACL injury incidence in female multidirectional athletes. Further higher quality controlled research is required whereby participants are matched by skill training history, resistance training history and strength status to ensure an appropriate comparison between males and females