HINK0003EU Speaking with the Past: Explorations in Language and History

The course explores various theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of history using perspectives and methods from linguistics and linguistic anthropology. The aim is for students to understand how history is accessed through language, and to cultivate awareness of how critical attention to language and its structures (from grammar to text and discourse structures) participates in shaping our understanding of history.

Topically we cover ground from the comparative historical method and theories of language change, sociolinguistics and dialectology, to structural and post-structuralist approaches to text-analysis and representation, and to the potential of linguistics in the study of deep history. Methodologically we will do practical exercises in applying different types of linguistic methods on historical sources.

Lectures draw on the instructor’s experience with the languages and histories of indigenous Mesoamerica and North America, and draws its empirical examples from that contexts, but the methods and theories can be applied to any region or period. Students will be able to work with sources from their own regions and fields and on ongoing projects, and they will present analyses for each other at a weekly colloquium which supplements the lectures