The following is a list of suggested essay topics. You can talk to me or to your TA (Marian) about other ideas, of course. This list is really only meant to help you get started thinking about a topic, and although you are welcome to adopt any of the suggestions below you are equally welcome to tinker with them to suit your interests.

1. Examine the notion of “political correctness” as a social and political movement operating in the domains of language and education. You might consider whether the wave of popular press coverage is an accurate reflection of the movement's strength, or possibly a sign of our society's backlash against minorities and their struggles. Clearly there is room here to discuss the notion of prescriptivism in language. You might also want to look at the history of the term, which has suffered what linguists refer to as “linguistic pejoration.” Robin Lakoff’s The Language War has an excellent chapter on this subject and a comprehensive bibliography.

2. What are some of the significant aspects in the relation between propaganda and language? How is propaganda constructed and maintained, and under what guises does it appear in a modern industrial society? Is education propaganda? Jacques Ellul's Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes is a classic text (that means it is getting old) but it is still a wonderfully lucid account. A more recent source that you might find useful is Randal Marlin’s book Propaganda & The Ethics of Persuasion (2002). Paul Rutherford’s book Endless Propaganda (2000) is challenging but full of useful information.

3. Consider the function of humor in the context of everyday language. In your paper you can discuss the different theories that have been used to explain humor, perhaps taking note of the way in which these explanations frequently conflict. Whether you read the whole book, parts of the book, or secondary sources discussing the book, you really can’t avoid Freud’s Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious. Very little of it will strike you as funny nearly one hundred years after its publication, but it remains the single most influential book for theorists of humor. You will find some excellent recent work on humor by the British sociologist Michael Billig. Some of his essays can be found in the journal Sociological Review and also in Theory, Culture & Society. His recent writing on racist humor (KKK web sites, for instance) is challenging (and perhaps disturbing), but well worth reading if you’ve ever wondered about that blanket excuse, “it’s only a joke.” The bibliographies for his essays are substantial.

4. Explore the thesis that “gossip” is an emancipatory and empowering discourse. Your essay can be framed in the context of gender language issues but should go beyond this to consider the notion of emancipation itself. There are good essays on this subject in books edited by Deborah Cameron and Robin Lakoff. Deborah Tannen’s works on feminism and linguistics are good sources. You can also find material in the journal Women and Language, such as Patty Sotirin’s recent article, ‘All They Do is Bitch Bitch Bitch’: Political and Interactional Features of Women’s Officetalk.

5. Consider the idea of etiquette as a possible essay topic. Brown and Levinson’s study, Politeness: Some Universals in Language Use (1987) is still regarded as a definitive piece of research in the field. Politeness in Language, edited by Richard Watts is a good source also. You would also find useful information in works by Pierre Bourdieu and Erving Goffman.

6. You might discuss the idea that science operates as a “master narrative” in modern capitalist states. You would want to look at The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge by Jean FranÁois Lyotard, but there are other texts you would find particularly useful, including Morris Berman's The Re-enchantment of the World. And The Postmodern Adventure, by Steven Best and Doug Kellner is an important recent work dealing with this subject.  There are other ways you can approach this topic, of course, including a feminist reading of modern science.  An especially provocative book in that vein is Valerie Plumwood's Feminism and the Mastery of Nature.

7. Much has been written about medical discourse, and there are a considerable number of angles you can take on this subject. The advertising of drugs on television represents a significant change in public (and professional) attitudes regarding conceptions of appropriate conduct, and some of these changes are discussed in considerable detail in Jeffrey Robinson’s recent book The Prescription Game. If your interest in more with the political and cultural dimensions of medicine, then there are countless volumes you can consult. Communicating Health: Personal, Cultural, and Political Complexities, written by Patricia Geist-Martin, Eileen Ray, and Barbara Sharf, is a bit simplistic, but it is a very useful introduction to the field. Also, Kevin White’s new book An Introduction to the Sociology of Health and Illness is an exceptional survey of the field with a social constructionist perspective that I find compelling and intellectually stimulating.

8. Nonverbal communication is a subject that tends to receive only brief and usually superficial treatment in most communication courses. This course has been no exception. However, a wealth of fascinating and important information on communication and the body has been written in the past few years. I don’t just mean things like “body language,” but rather things like the role of embodiment in everyday social practices. Five Bodies: The Human Shape of Modern Society by John O’Neill is an interesting piece of research, though a bit off-putting in the second half of the volume. Also, look at Robert Romanyshyn's Technology as Symptom and Dream and Drew Leder's The Absent Body to get started. There are also many good collections on the subject of the body, including The Body: Social Process and Cultural Theory, edited by Mike Featherstone, Mike Hepworth, and Bryan Turner. There is also The Fashioned Body: Fashion, Dress And Modern Social Theory by Joanne Entwistle, a book that explores pretty much what its title suggests.

9. Mircea Eliade's The Sacred and the Profane is a good starting point if you are interested in writing about the everyday communication of religious discourse. Your courseware reader also contains an essay that directs you to some ideas that you could focus on: the notion of prayer, the function of worship, the meaning of discourse in religious rituals, and so on. You would find Paul van Buren’s book, The Edges of Language: An Essay in the Logic of a Religion useful as well. Various journals of religion (The Journal of Religion, for one) have published articles on religious talk over the past few years.  There are also some excellent essays in Rhetorical Invention and Religious Inquiry, edited by Walter Jost and Wendy Olmsted.  The essay Naming God, by Paul Ricoeur, is brilliant.

10. How have changes in technology brought about changes in our society's conceptions of time? Jeremy Rifkin's Time Wars is a good and popular source to get you started. You'll also find that J. T. Fraser and others have been developing a “philosophy of time.” By connecting this work with that of people like E. T. Hall, you can investigate something like the discourse of temporality in consumer culture. How do metaphors relating to time (“Time is money,” for example) make evident the cultural values our society cherishes?

11. A good topic is the discourse of therapy, especially in light of the way that conventional views of therapeutic practice as a technique for personal emancipation have come under attack from different commentators. Dana Cloud’s book Control and Consolation in American Culture and Politics: Rhetorics of Therapy is recent and powerful. For Cloud, therapy is an ideological mechanism, an argument that permits you to take her views in any number of directions. There is also Philip Cushman’s book, Constructing the Self, Constructing America: A Cultural History of Psychotherapy. This is one of those books that critics like to call “monumental,” but don’t be put off by the praise. It is an amazing collection of research well worth the effort. David Healy’s book The Anti-Depressant Era is a compelling examination of the development of anti-depressants, but he also discusses the history of marketing and medicine.

12. In the book The Politics of Misinformation (2001), author Murray Edelman writes:

Ambiguity…is an innate characteristic of language and is especially conspicuous in political language because by definition politics concerns conflicts of interest. It is, in fact, impossible to formulate a nonambiguous sentence. A term, phrase, sentence, or paragraph can mean anything at all that a person wishes to read into it. Meanings are created by the conceptual frameworks, interests, biases, mistakes, and assumptions of those who use language and by their audiences. Ambiguities are enlarged by uncertainties in the definitions of words and concepts, by problems raised by syntax and sentence structure, and perhaps most tellingly, by vagueness in thought and expression that become manifest when particular audiences interpret spoken or written communication. (80)

For your essay you can explore further the idea that language is inherently ambiguous. You can also explore in more detail Edelman’s claim that there is something peculiar to political discourse that makes it more ambiguous that other forms of talk.

13. Pick an issue that is currently a concern in the academic press, preferably the social sciences, and examine critically the way this topic is discussed, debated, and even defined. For example, some have argued that a close reading of the literature about violence against women and children is written in such a way that the perpetrators are often not actually referred to. Other ideas might include the animal rights movement, mobilizing for war, tourism, the new spiritualism, the corporate agenda in education, and so on.