Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2016
From: Marisa Brook <marisa.brook@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Well-received essay topics
I ran into some unexpected success with an essay assignment lately, so I
thought I'd pass it around.
I've taught an introductory linguistics course this semester and assigned
what I thought would be a pretty ordinary short essay (4-5 pages, font size
10-12, on U.S. letter-sized paper); I figured it would afford the students
a chance to explore a few tangential areas that I find interesting. I
selected three topics and told them to pick one and write about it.
I definitely didn't expect this, but the students took really well to the
topics. The essays so far have been a huge pleasure to read - far beyond
what I expected. I'm getting fascinating examples (some of which I'd never
thought of myself), lively discussion, poetic descriptions, creative
extension of concepts from the class, and plenty of excellent secondary
sources (optional to begin with). About a third of the essays are
absolutely stellar, and not a single one has been less than very good. A
couple of students even went out of their way to tell me that they had fun
writing these - something I did facetiously tell the class I was hoping for
but didn't actually anticipate.
I mean, it's possible that I just managed to land an outlier bunch of
students this time around. But assuming that isn't the case, here's a set
of topics for short essays that I can now recommend. Feel free to
borrow/adapt/etc. I told the students that the questions here were mostly
to get them started (they certainly didn't need to answer all of them), but
that they needed to take a stance on the central question (underlined) and
defend it. To be fair, the argument could be made that I handed the
students a bit of an outline given the secondary questions I suggested;
however, those on their own aren't enough for a good essay of 4-5 pages.
I've included the entire assignment for those who are curious. I told the
students there were no incorrect answers as long as the central stance was
well-supported and -argued; the first topic is arguably less open-ended
than the others, but they were all meant to be conducive to some creative
thinking.
1. Language on the Internet: The Uniformitarian Principle (Labov 1970,
1972) proposes that language change should proceed the same way in the
present as it proceeded in the past. That is, we can draw insights about
the past from studying the present, assuming that this is how it has always
worked. Does the Uniformitarian Principle still hold in the Internet age?
(Have email, texting, instant-messaging, etc. introduced new processes of
language change, or are these just new forms of data that help reveal
linguistic variation that has always been there? Are things different as a
result of technology from how they used to be?)
2. Language and music: To what extent is human music like language? (For
instance, could music be said to have âsyntaxâ and/or âmeaningâ and/or
other properties of language? Can music be used to communicate? In what
ways does music vary across time and space â and is this like language? Are
there any neurological similarities between language and music? Does
culture influence language and music in similar ways?)
3. Constructed languages: Artificial languages, or âconlangsâ, are
languages that are invented â either for the same of science fiction and
fantasy (e.g. Klingon, Vulcan, Naâvi, Dothraki, Dâni, and J. R. R.
Tolkienâs languages) â or in an attempt to improve/facilitate human
communication (Esperanto, Interlingua, Lojban). Can constructed languages
teach us something about language that ordinary languages cannot? How so,
or why not? (Do they provide insight into the workings of human languages?
In what ways do âlogicalâ languages claim to be more âlogicalâ? For
sci-fi/fantasy languages, how do conlang creators make their creations more
âexoticâ than human languages? What happens when conlangers try to teach an
artificial language to kids?)
Marisa Brook, Assistant Professor
Department of Linguistics & Germanic, Slavic, Asian and African Languages
Michigan State University
East Lansing, Michigan 48824-1027 USA
http://linglang.msu.edu/people/faculty/marisa-brook/
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