Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program
351-0-20: Topics in Latino Studies : Language Ideologies & Latina/o Identity

Coordinator: Jonathan Daniel Rosa
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Instructor: Jonathan Daniel Rosa
Office address:
Phone:
E-mail:
Office Hours:

Expected Enrollment: 20

COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course aims to shed light on the history, creation, experience, and implications of Latin@ identities by focusing on language as a starting point for analysis. Such an approach positions ideas about language as lenses through which to investigate aspects of identity that too often escape both popular and scholarly attention. We will address issues such as socialization, standardization, symbolic power, linguistic nationalism, stigmatization, bilingualism/ bidialectalism, codeswitching/styleshifting, “accent,” and language policy. These areas of concentration will interrogate folk notions about the nature of Spanglish,” “Ebonics,” and what it might mean to “sound Latin@.” The goal is to draw upon tools developed in linguistic anthropology, anthropolitical linguistics, and sociolinguistics, as well as other approaches to social and cultural analysis, in order to contribute to understandings of the complex ways in which Latin@ identities take shape in the contemporary moment.

[Course Descriptions for Spring 2009] [Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences] [LATIN_AM Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program]