Graduate

This course investigates and plays with the sentence, revealing its incredible potential to shape meaning, identity, voice, and our relationship with our readers. Drawing on work in functional linguistics (e.g., Aull, Hyland, Vande Kopple) and voice (e.g., Palacas, Young), we’ll see how different sentence-level choices create different meanings and effects. Assignments will regularly involve analyzing texts chosen and written by students, playing purposefully with language, and testing the effects of different choices. To aid analysis, generative AI (eg., GPT) and our imaginations will be used to generate different versions of the “same” text; An easy-to-use corpus analysis tool (AntConc) will help reveal textual patterns across large amounts of text. Through a final project, students will investigate some aspect of the sentence in a medium and context of their choice or address an interesting theoretical question about the sentence. This course is ideal for those interested in any kind of writing, writing education, or editing. Background in linguistics or grammar is not necessary. Open to undergraduates and graduate students.

Location

Rush Rhees Library Room G108 (TR 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

Restriction: Instructor's permission required

Location

Rush Rhees Library Room G121B (MWF 11:30AM - 2:30PM)