This course introduces students to basic concepts of speech communities and qualitative methods in the social sciences including ethnographic fieldwork and the analysis of face-to-face communication. It focuses on the details of everyday activities across communities of African descent and other communities and interactive environments. It is meant to provide a bridge between communications, the social sciences, linguistics and socio-cultural anthropology through the introduction of concepts and analytical techniques that privilege observation, participation, video recording and transcription of spontaneous interaction (as opposed to experimental tasks or introspection). Topics include language socialization, education, literacy, music and the visual arts, the power of language, miscommunication, and universal and culture-specific properties of human communication.

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