Teaching

Does the brain process emojis in the same way it processes spoken language? Why is the Pokémon named “Snorlax” larger than the one named “Pikachu”?

This course provides a broad overview of language—its structure, its origins, and its role in society. We'll try to understand why language is so weird (Why does the tiny island of Papua New Guinea have over 800 languages? Why does the !Xóõ language have 164 consonants?) by applying the tools of linguistics to the language we encounter in our daily lives and to languages from around the world.

How does our culture influence our language? How does our language influence our culture?

In this course, we will examine the role of language in the melting pot of America. We'll look at language as influenced by race, gender, sexual and gender identity, and power structures in order to see how social dynamics affect the way people speak—and the way people interpret what they hear.

We'll learn about the methods involved in gathering sociolinguistic data, and even engage in some hands-on research ourselves.

Language touches every aspect of our lives. From reading the morning paper to decrypting secret codes, the subconscious knowledge of language is uniquely human. In this course we'll ask what it means to have a command of language—do animals have it? Infants?

By examining the structures of the world's languages, we will discover why linguists believe in a “universal grammar” in spite of the world's rich linguistic diversity. We'll also learn how to make the sounds of the world's languages—from French nasal vowels to the clicks of Africa's Bantu languages.

This course is suited to anyone interested in language, how the mind works, or the characteristics that make us uniquely human.

This course will introduce you to tools and methods for collecting, analyzing, and visualizing quantitative data—including survey responses, experimental results, and usability studies. We’ll learn how to turn raw numbers into digestible information in the form of numerical and visual summaries, basic statistical analysis, and inferences about your sample population. And we’ll learn some basic data-wrangling techniques along the way that will be useful even outside the realm of research.