Language and the self: identity, thought and representation

Learning objectives

Explain the relationship between language and thought, evaluating linguistic determinism and linguistic relativity against the evidence usually cited for each

Analyse how idiolect and sociolect are built from accent, dialect, lexical choice, occupational register and code-switching, and explain what a speaker signals by shifting between them

Apply accommodation theory to a transcript, identifying convergence and divergence and explaining what each move does to the relationship between the speakers

Analyse how language represents social groups, examining gendered usage, labelling, euphemism and the arguments made about politically sensitive vocabulary

Evaluate research and theory on language and identity against real data, noting the size and design of the study before accepting its conclusion

Write a discursive response that sets competing positions against one another and reaches a conclusion grounded in linguistic evidence

Explain universalism and the language of thought hypothesis and place them against linguistic relativity and determinism, and weigh innatist against empiricist accounts of where linguistic knowledge comes from