Varieties of English in the British Isles - Detailseite

The course deals with regional and social variation in English, extending material covered in the introductory seminar in Module 5. The first part of the course gives a detailed overview of the most important general issues in the study of dialects, including the relation between regional/social varieties and extralinguistic phenomena such as social class and gender, the notions of standard and non-standard varieties as well as the discussion of 'right' and 'wrong' language use. It also compares the two major standard varieties of English, English Standard English and General American English. On this basis, the second part of the course examines some major issues of variation in the British Isles (UK and Ireland).