Courses: Department of Central Eurasian Studies

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U320/U520 Language and Society in China
Talant Mawkanuli

This course is designed to provide students with a broad base of knowledge about the contemporary cultural and linguistic diversities in the People’s Republic of China. The course explores the social and linguistic aspects of the languages and societies in China and how they have changed over the centuries, focusing particularly on Minority languages and cultures. The first half of the course will cover general themes such as the history, cultures, multilingual make-up, education, migration, and religions. This course will also examine the relationship between language and society, focusing on the variety of ways in which language and society are related in China. It will explore the role that language plays in the shaping of China’s national policy and how that policy in turn shapes and influences the actual use and status of each individual language. In the second half the topics to be discussed include: standard Chinese, language and identity, bilingual education, language endangerment, writing reform, language planning, and language policy.

This course has no prerequisites and does not require background knowledge of China’s languages. The course will consist of lectures, reading assignments, and class discussions and will make extensive use of films, audio-visual materials and other illustrated materials.

Requirements:

For undergraduates, there will be two examinations (a take-home midterm and a final), and one brief (5 pages) book review which will count equally toward the final grade. Graduate students will take both examinations, but are required to write a term paper (20-25 pages) based on outside reading and research, on a topic relating to the languages and society in China.
Presentation: During the course of the semester, each student will have the responsibility for leading class discussion and presentation of comments and summaries on a given topic based on the daily reading assignment.

Weekly report on reading assignment: a brief summary of the main points of the readings and a response to one or two questions drawing connections between information from different sources and evaluating the information covered in class and comparing Central Asian language and cultural contexts with your own.