LIGN 8 — Languages and Cultures of America
Linguistic Autobiography1
For this assignment, you will connect your experience as a user of one or more American language (this includes ANY
language that you speak) to concepts covered throughout this course. Think about how your experience as a
speaker/signer of a language (or languages) has been formed and about who or what has been part of this formation.
You should contextualize your experiences in the larger social setting and explore how these experiences have shaped
your own attitudes about language. To do this, apart from your academic research, I encourage you to interview family
members and friends with whom you have grown up. Final version is due Sunday March 6th @ 11:59pm via TurnItIn.
Requirements:
1. A thesis statement which connects your personal language experiences to at least ONE topic we have discussed
in class.
2. Develop the body of the paper connecting it to your topic and thesis statement – develop your thesis and how
that relates to at least THREE concepts covered in class.
3. A well-integrated reference to at least THREE academic sources (These should include concepts from the class
readings, discussions, and lectures (do not cite lectures as they are not academic sources)).
4. Correct use of terms from class when appropriate (e.g., language shift, Three-Generation Rule, linguistic
discrimination, mutual intelligibility, overt/covert prestige, diglossia, etc…)
5. The paper should be clearly written, proofread, and no longer than 750 words.
6. If you submit a paper that does not address the above criterion you will receive a zero.
Thesis statement
The thesis statement is the point of your paper; it should summarize how your personal experience relates to course
concepts. It should be clear, concise, and the body of your paper should support and connect to it.
Some generic examples:
• My connection with my peers led me to use the non-Standard variety of English spoken in my neighborhood,
despite the fact that my parents spoke Standard English at home.
• Language attitudes about the low status of my regional variety motivated me to switch to the standard form
after leaving home.
• My positive attitudes towards my heritage language allowed me to maintain it throughout my adolescence.
• My family is an example of the Three-Generation Rule, as we have shifted from Polish, spoken by my
grandparents, to only speaking English.
• Being in a large Tagalog speech community helped my family to maintain the language past three generations.
• My school had a subtractive bilingual program, so we switched from Chinese to English medium instruction
by the 8th grade.
• Much like other heritage speakers, I have limited literacy in my heritage language, but I can be mistaken for a
monolingual Hindi speaker under the right circumstances.
• Going to Saturday School helped me become literate in my heritage language despite being schooled in an
English-Only environment.
References & Use of Terms from Class
The references should be to academic papers i.e.: material we read or watched in class, or other academic sources (not
Wikipedia or Google). Do not cite lecture slides – You should cite primary sources. This can include any of the
course readings or other academic/scholarly articles or publications. If the reference is a non-academic source, like a
video about language attitudes or a blog post about Mock Italian, you should justify its use i.e.: “This quote is
representative about attitudes towards Chicanx Spanish”. You do not need to cite the terms we learned in class unless
you are referencing a particular reading.
1
Thanks to Andrés Aguilar & Savi Namboripad for the development of this project. (updated 2022/01/20)
LIGN8 – McIntosh Winter 2022 – Section ID #63082
2
By “well-integrated” I mean that the source should be relevant, and it should demonstrate or add information which
helps to contextualize or better understand your own experience. The source should support your main and/or subpoints of your paper’s thesis. Please meet with us during office hours or email us for clarifications about your final
draft.
If you are trying to find more information about a language or language variety that you speak, there are many great
online resources, including Ethnologue https://www.ethnologue.com (must be logged into UCSD VPN to access), the
World Atlas of Languages – https://wals.info/, Glottolog – https://glottolog.org, and North American English Dialects –
https://aschmann.net/AmEng/.
For Interviewing family members/friends
• Interviews (though not required) should help to add context to your paper’s thesis. If you decide to use
interviews, please come up with some questions ahead of time and use the same set with each person.
You should submit your questions (not the actual interview) as an appendix in your final paper (the
appendix goes at the very end of the paper after the reference list). Please meet with us or email us if
you have any queries about the interview or paper format (interview questions and references do not
count towards the overall word limit).
Style and clarity
• Use of APA style is required for references. A title page and abstract are optional for this paper. If you
need writing assistance, please seek help from the Teaching & Learning Commons. All papers are to be
word-processed, proofread, and solely the work of the author (references do not count towards the
overall word limit).
• Though the paper need not be written in a very formal register, please conform to Standard academic
English. The writing should be clear and proofread – Please seek help from the Teaching & Learning
Commons for help on your final draft or have one of your peers read your final draft and comment on it.