Above section meets with CMCL C645. For much of the 20th century, the study
of language has been dominated by perspectives oriented toward language as
an abstract formal system.  At the same time, however, scholars in a number
of adjacent disciplines have maintained a highly productive
counter-perspective, centering around the social semiotics of language and
built upon a conception of language as socially constituted, with an
emphasis on the situated use of language in the conduct of social life.  In
this course, the first of a two-semester sequence, we will examine some of
the foundations of this latter approach, with an emphasis on literary and
linguistic perspectives in the work of the Russian Formalists, the Prague
School, Roman Jakobson, J. L. Austin, Kenneth Burke, and Raymond Williams.
In the following semester, we will extend our examination to ethnographic
and sociological approaches to the social semiotics of language.

Textbooks:

	Austin, J. L. 1975. How to Do Things with Words. J. O. Urmson and
Marina Sbisą, eds.,Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
	Morris, Pam, ed. 1994. The Bakhtin Reader: Selected Writings of
Bakhtin, Medvedev, Voloshinov. London: Arnold.
	Williams, Raymond. 1977. Marxism and Literature. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.

In addition to the above-listed published works, there is a reader for the
course, available at TIS College Bookstore, 1302 E. 3rd St.