This course is intended as an introduction to the issue of language use within a social context from a sociolinguistic standpoint –a discipline dedicated to the study of language in its social and cultural manifestations.



The issues discussed in class will include: use of language registers and their implications, sociolinguistics as a field of research, social variations in French, verbal interactions, linguistic representations, and the emergence of an urban sociolinguistic domain. No previous knowledge of linguistics is required.