This course considers how language broadly understood forms our lives. Studies of the sign systems of the world show that we constantly transform language by using it in situated interactions, online or in a classroom, at a writing desk or in a public square. But here we ask more: When does language use transform what is being communicated about? When does it transform the speaker? Drawing primarily from linguistic anthropology but also education, linguistics, sociology, philosophy, and psychology our topic requires use to come to methodological terms with the basic principles of sign systems and the dynamics of everyday interactions, suffuse as they are with power and the politics of description. In a series of assignments, students will learn to explore these issues where they live, so to speak, by gathering and analyzing their own empirical materials from scenes of language use that they care about.
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