After completing this course students are able to: 

The course treats the linguistic processes in language contact situations and how these relate to both societal and individual aspects of multilingualism. The first part of the course introduces the concepts of sociolinguistics that are needed to address issues of multilingualism and language contact, while the last part of the course develops this interdisciplinary perspective further by treating as a case study the island of Aruba, where multiple languages are spoken by overlapping linguistic communities.
 
Societal structures and linguistic structures each play a role in the consequences of language contact. In some contact situations, a language undergoes a process of language shift, while in others, a language maintains its form and position in society. The processes of language shift and language maintenance are subject to societal and political factors, including the ways in which a government gives direction to linguistic developments via language planning measures, and these will be one focus in the first portion of the course. A second focus will be the individual and linguistic consequences of language contact. Examples of such consequences include the influence of languages in contact on each other lexically, phonologically and grammatically; language mixing, including code-switching (the use of more than one language in a conversational setting); the emergence of new languages and ‘foreigner talk’, the way in which native speakers of a language attempt to make themselves more understandable to less fluent speakers. Also relevant are the outcomes of second language acquisition and the consequences for education of language contact. 
 
The significance of these issues is further developed in the final part of the course, with topics such as the development of creole languages, spoken versus written language, educational language policies and the oppression of minority languages, and language and identity, all contextualized in the complexity of contemporary Aruban society.  This approach provides student with an interdisciplinary perspective on multilingualism and language contact and change.
 

FORMAT

Class meetings include a combination of lectures, group discussion and student presentations on relevant literature in the first part of the course and own research topics in the second part of the course. Individual students and/or groups of students will have responsibility for the content of many class meetings.  Students are expected to complete readings and actively participate in the class discussions even when they are not responsible for presenting.