The nature of language. An elementary survey of linguistic disciplines. Phonetics, morphology, syntax, semantics, language, and society.

This course studies central concepts in phonetics such as speech anatomy, acoustics, articulation, analysis and perception of vowels, consonants and suprasegmentals as well as the International Phonetic Alphabet.

This course explores the intersection of language and the legal system. Students will be introduced to the principles in linguistics to analyze language in legal contexts, including authorship attribution, discourse analysis, meaning and interpretation of spoken and written language in criminal investigations. Through case studies and practical applications, participants will learn how linguistic evidence can influence legal outcomes and the role of linguists as expert witnesses. By the end of the course, students will have a good understanding of how language shapes legal processes and the impact of linguistic analysis on the justice system.

How do language and society affect one another? This course explores various topics related to the study of language and society with a focus on Canadian contexts. Topics of study include the role of social variables (gender/sex, age, ethnicity, social class, education, identity) in language variation and change. The course also examines topics such as bilingualism, multilingualism, language contact, language policies, language ideologies, and language and the environment.

This course will focus on the use of technology in the field of linguistics. It may cover computational and corpus linguistics, uses of technology in second-language acquisition, and/or the technological tools used in translation. Lectures and class discussions will be supplemented by hands-on seminars which introduce various technological resources with applications for the field of linguistics.