I have a proposal for you: sociolinguistics is worth your time. “Sociolinguistics” might sound daunting or disconnected from everyday life, but really it just means, “how languages and societies (or “groups of people”) interact”. What does that mean? A lot of things. One way to think of a culture is as a filter on a…
The first thing we need to talk about is: there’s no such thing as “English.” Okay, that was a little click-bait-y – there is no such thing as a singular form of English. Or of any language, for that matter. What there are are Englishes: different varieties of English, just like there are different varieties…
English is taught as a “second” (or third, or fourth, or tenth…) language for many reasons, and in many contexts. It’s taught in the US because, well, it’s been the dominant language here for a while. Especially for school purposes, it’s crucial that students understand English because that’s how every other subject is taught. When…