Fall 2017 Instructor: Dr. Cliff Burgess
Class Time: Tue 8:30-11:20am, SSCB 9200

Course outline available at sfu.ca/outlines

Course Details:

LING 111 introduces linguistics through the medium of the English language. Linguistics is likely to be a new subject for many of you and I think you will like it a lot. You’ll learn about where words come from and how and why their meanings and forms change. We’ll consider the historical context in which English and its ancestral languages are, and were, spoken and how this context shapes English vocabulary today.

The things you’ll learn in LING 111 will help you to build vocabulary and enhance your reading ability and expressive power. Here’s where you’ll discover how words may evolve street meanings quite different from their traditional dictionary meanings. You’ll also learn how dictionaries are created and how key words in fields that you’ll be majoring in have come to look and sound the way that they do.

Practical issues like translation and interpretation feature in this course, too. Finally, toward the end of LING 111, we will examine how technology, social media, and even typography impact modern English vocabulary. And no course of this kind would be complete without a look at the influence of World Englishes — English as it is spoken in different parts of the world — and how these varieties influence the vocabulary of one another.