FREN556B

Identity, Ideology and Power

Instructor: Marie-Eve Bouchard
Language of instruction: French

This graduate seminar will delve into three critical themes in sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology: ideology, identity, and power. Its broad objective is to examine how language ideologies are involved in the construction of power structure and social identities. Focusing largely on key articles, this course engages with debates and methods for analysing linguistic evidence pertaining to symbolic power, cultural contact and language shift, migration and mobility, authenticity and identity, resistance, and digital communication. Throughout this seminar, we will explore the social, economic and political consequences of different identification strategies by discussing how people’s beliefs about language reinforce or contest normative power structures and social. All discussions and work submitted in this course will be in French. The class is designed for three main audiences: 1) graduate students in French linguistics, 2) graduate students in the French literature interested in language use, and 3) advanced undergraduate students who have taken sociolinguistics courses at FHIS. All discussions and work submitted in this course will be in French.


Recommended readings: Most readings will be available on Canvas.