SOC 309:
Language, Power & Society

Spring 2008 · Professor Markella Rutherford

Contents:

Find background information
Find books
Find scholarly journal articles
Key websites
Creating an annotated bibliography
Evaluating what you find

• $300 award for a paper or project of any length from a 100 or 200 level Wellesley College course (2 awards)
• $750 award for a paper or project of any length from a 300 level Wellesley College course, excluding 360s, and 370s (1 award)
• Deadline: April 1, 2008

• new! Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology
• 21st Century Sociology: A Reference Handbook - chapters on sociological theory of various topics
• International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences > Linguistics > Sociolinguistics
• Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics
• International Encyclopedia of Linguistics - Science Reference qP29 .I58 2003 (3 volumes)
• Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics - Clapp Reference P29 .E48 1994 (8 volumes)
• Language and Communication: A Cross-Cultural Encyclopedia - Clapp Reference P29 .F47 1998
• Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE) - Clapp Reference PE2843 .D52 1985

Use the Wellesley library catalog to find books, videos, and journals (not individual articles).

a few tips:

• use a keyword search for simple concepts
  
  - find a book that looks useful, click on the title, then click on the Full Record tab to see the subject terms
  - click on each subject term to find "more like this"
  - for example: a keyword search for spanglish leads to these subject terms (and more books on your topic):
  
  
• Mexican Americans -- Language
• English language -- United States -- Foreign words and phrases -- Spanish
• English language -- United States -- Foreign elements -- Spanish
• English language -- Variation -- United States
• Spanish language -- Influence on English
• Languages in contact -- United States
• Hispanic Americans -- Language
  
  
• for a more complex search, use Advanced Search and combine multiple concepts using AND for best results
• use synonyms to find all the ways your topic is expressed  (language or communication or speech)
• use truncation to save time (assimilat* for assimilation, assimilating)
• use parentheses to enclose each concept "string"

for example, searching the topic: the role of American Sign Language in Deaf Culture
you could do an Advanced Search:
             (ASL or American Sign Language or signing)       [using synonyms]
    AND  (deaf culture or hearing-impair* )        [using * for variants of a word]

leading to subject terms such as the following (each of which links to more books on your topic):

American Sign Language - History

Deaf - Means Of Communication - United States

Deaf - United States - Social Conditions

Deaf - History

Some generally useful subject headings for this course might be:

• Sociolinguistics and related subcategories
• English Language - Dialects - United States [or other language/country of interest]
• English Language - United States - Social Aspects
• English Language - United States - Variation
• Speech and Social Status - United States

• if our copy of a book is checked out, click on or to the right of the title to request a book quickly (2-4 days)
• Search WorldCat to find material we don’t own, click on and request through ILL (interlibrary loan)
• In a hurry? Get a BLC card and borrow the book directly from a nearby library

tips:

• to find the full text of an article, click on the title for the full record, then look for the Find It! @ Wellesley button to link to the full text (online if we have it, or in print, or to the Interlibrary loan request if we don't own the journal)
  
  
• do your searching early and place interlibrary loan requests NOW for books and articles we don't have -- then, when you're ready to start reading and writing, you'll have a great selection of materials. If you wait, your choices will be very limited.

the most useful databases

• Linguistics & Language Behavior Abstracts - index to articles on all aspects of linguistics, 1973 to present
• Sociological Abstracts
        - index to articles on all aspects of sociology, 1963 to present
• Anthropology Plus (index to articles) and AnthroSource (full text articles from a set of anthropology journals)
• MLA Bibliography - index to articles on literature, linguistics, film, and folklore, from all cultures, 1963 to present.
• Ethnic NewsWatch
        - interdisciplinary full text database of newspapers, magazines and journals from ethnic, minority and native presses, 1960 to present
• Academic Search Premier
        - broad, multidisciplinary database of both popular and scholarly articles, mostly fulltext
        - tip: limit to peer-reviewed articles or select the "Academic Journals" icon above your search results
  
• Project Muse
        - full text academic journals in the humanities & social sciences, from the past five years - see JSTOR for prior years
  
• JSTOR
        - full text of scholarly articles in all fields, up to 3 to 5 years ago (not recent articles)
  
  
• Google Scholar
        - excellent tool for interdisciplinary topics that "fall through the cracks" of databases - link directly to our databases if we have the full text, or request through Interlibrary Loan - click on "Find It @ Wellesley"

key scholarly e-journals

• NEW! International Journal of the Sociology of Language (on-campus only)
• Language in Society
• Women and Language

• Cultural Survival Quarterly
• Do you Speak American? - PBS series
• Resources for Language and Gender Studies
  
• African American Female Communication - a bibliography
• Linguistic Politeness Research Group

• Brief guide from Duke University
  
  
• Our guide to citing your sources
  

Criteria to keep in mind when choosing and using soures:

• Accuracy - Does the author cite her/his sources and are they legitimate?
• Authority - Who wrote the source? Are they credible?
• Objectivity - Does the author have a bias, political or commercial or persuasive?
• Currency - Is this information new or based on outdated sources? Can you tell how current it is?

Wellesley College Library • WCIS • Laura Reiner • last modified: April 6, 2008