Our social issues class, Language, Society, and Culture uses real life examples pertaining to the complexity of languages in societies to incorporate themes of critical thinking and the accommodation of uncertainty. Described in the USC Course Catalogue, the objective of our linguistics class is to "discourse patterns among diverse social groups in institutional and interpersonal settings; interrelationships among language practices and gender, socioeconomic status, ethnicity; social structures and cultural values as reflected in language policies and practices." This social issue class, similar to all Social Issues courses offered at USC, steps away from simply memorizing information and turns to attaining deeper levels of understanding on the part of the students. George A. Thoma’s model “The Perry Model of Intellectual and Ethical Development” supports that a change in focus from solely acquiring large amounts of information to an actual retention and application of said information is present in schooling as students mature and progress to higher levels of learning. Superficially, it may appear as though Linguistics 115 is a course that merely utilizes the skills required to listen to a long lecture and take detailed notes. By exploring deeper into the course syllabus and objectives, one sees that the purpose is quite different than that of the obvious level.
The actual goal of the class is to challenge students to reevaluate the way they view languages and reinterpret how and why certain languages came to be. To apply this objective to the bigger picture involving society and its inhabitants, students utilize skills pertaining to critical reasoning to address problems that are sure to arise in the evaluation of what defines a language.
