English 395: History of the English Language

Dr. Johanna Rubba
English Department
Cal Poly State University, San Luis Obispo
Last update 12/31/11

Winter 2012

Site Map:
Syllabus (course plan) with reading assignments	Course Objectives (study guide)
Faire Project Information and Instructions	Faire Gallery: Photos of Projects from Faires Past
Class slide presentations are available under the "Course Materials" section of the course site on Blackboard

Course Information:

Schedule: Sec. 01: MTWR 12:10-1 pm 10-126 (Ag) Prerequisite: ENGL 145 (Reasoning, argumentation, and writing) or equivalent English Department Office: 47-32 English Department Phone: 756-2596 English Department Fax: 756-6374	Instructor: Dr. Johanna Rubba Office: 47-35B * E-mail: jrubba@calpoly.edu Office phone: 756-2184 Office Hours: T 10:10-11 am, W 10:10-11 am & 4:15-5:05 pm, R 2:10-3 pm & by appointment Home page: http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba To find my office: Enter at the TOP of the hill on which Bldg. 47 stands. 35 is the middle hallway on the right. My office is the next-to-last on the right.	The best way to contact me and get a prompt response is through personal visits in office hours or e-mail. To see my full schedule, please click here. To make an appointment, go to my schedule, find a few times that are open for both of us, and send me an e-mail with those times. I will respond within 48 hours (during the week) and confirm one of those times. Responses on weekends cannot be guaranteed.
NOTE CONCERNING BLACKBOARD: For this course, I will use Blackboard for ONLY one thing: course readings outside of the two textbooks. ALL remaining course materials will be on this website, which is not connected to Blackboard in any way. NOTE CONCERNING E-MAIL: I frequently communicate with my classes and my individual students via e-mail. Important changes may be announced via e-mail before we meet for class. Be sure to check your e-mail regularly. Be sure that you receive all Cal Poly mail, if you use a private account. It is also important to me to be able to recognize a student from her/his e-mail address. If you have an e-mail address that does not include some part of your name, it could cause your e-mails to go to the junk or spam folder. Also, in triage situations, I may put such an e-mail on the back burner. Another thing to consider is professionalism. Whimsical or edgy e-mail addresses aren't a way to impress potential employers or important officials.

Course Description:

How did English get to be the way it is today? Has it always been pronounced as it is today? If not, what caused the change? Why is English different in different English-speaking countries, such as England, Australia, the USA, and Canada? Why is English spelling so #@#!!# crazy? Does English come from Latin? Where do our words come from? Who decides which kind of English is 'best'? Will English always be the main international language? What is the relationship between English and other languages, like Spanish, German, or Japanese?

This course answers these questions, tracing the development of English, in less than two thousand years, from an obscure Germanic language of Northern Europe to a world language used daily by hundreds of millions. Many of its most dramatic changes reflect the collision and intermingling of cultures in conquest, trade, and migration. We will study the physical changes in the language's systems within this rich framework of social, political, and cultural history. The course will teach you, not only about the particular history of English, but also about the linguistic and social consequences of the contact of peoples of different cultures, and about patterns of change that apply to all languages.

Learning Objectives:

Master major aspects of the history of the English language, from its beginnings in Proto-Indo-European to today.
Develop an overall understanding of language change as it applies to all languages, leading to the enormous diversity we see across and within languages today.
Take with you the lifelong understanding of language change in progress and the social consequences thereof, letting that inform you as a citizen regarding language policy matters as they arise in the United States.
Understand the linguistic consequences of various kinds of cultural contact, from invasion and conquest through trade to immigration and settlement of peoples in a new land, letting this inform you as a citizen regarding policies towards and within other countries, and especially as regards language minority groups in the United States.
Understand the process by which a particular dialect of a language is standardized, including the social prejudices that underlie the choice and the ways in which use of the standard dialect is enforced. English serves as our case study in this course.

Texts:

(1) The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, by David Crystal. Cambridge University Press, 2003. THIRD Edition.
(2) Online reserve readings on the course's Blackboard site.
(3) Printouts of the course slide presentation (available on Blackboard). These serve as outlines for your notes, and as records of the (sometimes long and complicated) examples I give. I will move through the presentation assuming that you have these printouts, which means that you often will not have time to take notes of items presented on the slides. However, do attend to the presentation, even though you have the printout. Often, important animations do not show up on the printout and, of course, my explanations that go along with the animations are important.

Course Requirements: READ THIS SECTION CAREFULLY!

Attendance: More than 4 absences will harm your final grade. Please visit my Attendance Policy page for details.
Reading: There is very little written homework for this class, but there is reading. This reading is required. Read assignments ON TIME, consulting the course objectives first. Do not expect to catch up on reading or cram for exams. It will not work. Lectures will cover material that is not in the readings, and will be tested.
Exams: Midterm and comprehensive final exam.
Faire Project: Choice of creative project, data project, or research project. Project presentations (History of English Faire) will occur late in the quarter. ALL ENROLLED STUDENTS MUST ATTEND THE FAIRE. Date/time of Faire TBA.
Grading standards: Visit my Grading Standards web page to read my grading policy.

Class etiquette:

I'm sure that, if you come to my office, you will show me due respect, as I will you. My classroom is the same as my office; I expect each individual to behave as if we were the only two people in the room. Think about this for a while and how it would feel in a classroom. Then practice.

Have you ever taught a class? If so, you can probably appreciate the requests I make here:

Come to class on time. If you arrive late, you are responsible for checking that I have checked you off for attendance. If there is a special circumstance that causes you to be late frequently, talk with me about it. Trouble finding parking isn't a legitimate reason for being late.
Prepare for class -- take out notes, etc. Please be ready to start class when I'm ready, including quieting down. I will have to set up my laptop and get the projector going; please take this time to quiet down. I will wait for the class to quiet down before I begin my lecture.
Teaching is a juggling act, and it's easy to get derailed. In my case, if there is chatting in the room, I lose my concentration, my train of thought, and a little bit of patience. PLEASE do not chat during class. If you have a question, don't be afraid to ask me instead of a classmate. If there is persistent chatting, the chatters will be asked to leave the room.
If you use a laptop or iPad to take notes, you must sit near the front of the room, no farther back than the second row. I would prefer that you not use such devices for taking notes.
When I enter the classroom, turn off your phones/Blackberries, etc., and put them away. If you text during class, I will ask you to leave the room. If you're tempted to look something up on your phone during class, make a note in the margin of your notebook and look it up later.
If you have an urgent situation going on that requires you to leave your phone on, let me know.

Grade calculation:		Grade conversion guide (applied to all graded work & to course grades):
Midterm: 90 pts. =	30%	A+ = 97-100% A = 94-96% A- = 90-93% B+ = 87-89% B = 84-86% B- = 80-83%
Final exam: 130 pts. =	43%	C+ = 77-79% C = 74-76% C- = 70-73% D+ = 67-69% D = 64-66% D- = 60-63%
Faire project: 80 pts. =	27%	F+ = 57-59% F = 54-55% F- = 0-53%
Total: 300 pts. =	100%

Back to top of page