Applied Linguistics

Encountering Cultures: City as Text
This course examines the importance of culture and worldview in an increasingly multicultural world, and will give special attention to “reading” a city in preparation for service. It explores cultural diversity and the necessary skills for identifying the traits of different cultures (including the student’s own) in order to equip them to effectively interact with people of other cultures as they seek to fulfill the Great Commission and do their part to extend the kingdom of God among all nations.

Cultural Anthropology OR Practical Anthropology

Cultural Anthropology
This course is an introduction to the social science known as cultural anthropology. Readings, films, websites, lectures, reports, and an exam provide a survey of vocabulary, concepts, and illustrations related to this branch of anthropology. Class lectures, outside reading, and films provide more in-depth case studies on the Near East Bedouin, Western Apache, and Old Order Amish, among others.

Practical Anthropology
This course introduces cultural anthropology with special attention to the application of an anthropological perspective to Christian mission. Students learn to examine the framework of beliefs, assumptions, values, and behaviors that shape people’s lives, in order to be more effective in ministry.

Living & Working Cross-Culturally
This course focuses on practical strategies of evangelism and discipleship in a cross-cultural setting that result in indigenous-led churches which reproduce themselves by planting more churches. Special attention is given to contextualization, creative access strategies into closed countries, personal spiritual development, spiritual warfare, raising support, communicating with supporters, family dynamics, choosing an organization, and the changing role of the western missionary.

Missiology
This course presents a comprehensive and dynamic view of the mandate for Christian missionary activity. Students are challenged to a growing awareness that world evangelism is four-dimensional: biblical, historical, cultural, and strategic. A special emphasis is given to issues revolving around cultural and cross-cultural communication, along with how sensitivity in these areas can help further realize God’s global purpose.

Intercultural Communication
This course examines the unique problems and strategies for communicating the gospel effectively in intercultural contexts. Special attention is given to the student’s personal role in intercultural communication, including language, behavior, and sensitivities needed to bridge cultural boundaries.

Mission Theology
This course introduces students to principles and processes for developing a theology of mission for the context in which they serve. Emphasis is placed on biblical precedent and a practical approach to the local context.

Linguistics Internship Preparation
Typically completed during the spring term, this course consists of orientation meetings, required paperwork, required reading, cultural research, application for the student’s internship, and other necessary preparations for the field internship.

Linguistics Internship
This 10-week summer internship provides on-the-job training under the supervision and guidance of an experienced Bible translation team such as Pioneer Bible Translators or Wycliffe Bible Translators. Students are exposed to the full range of translation and literacy work on-site and are given the opportunity to participate.

Linguistics Internship Assessment
Typically this course is completed during Fall Session 1, upon successful completion of ICLI 3521 and ICLI 3522. During this course, students will successfully complete all paperwork and other debriefing requirements for their time on the field during the internship. Elements such as debriefing, field reports, and supporter reports are a part of this course. Successful completion of all course components is required.

Phonetics & Phonology
Phonetics and Phonology focuses on understanding the use of sound in human language. This includes a general understanding of description, production, and transcription of sounds based upon the International Phonetic Alphabet, as well as the identification of phonemes and phonological processes within specific languages.

Grammatical Analysis
This course provides tools for the analysis of language on morphological and syntactic levels.

Sociolinguistics
This course offers a view of language as a context-dependent social phenomenon. Students examine how cultural attitudes, expectations, behaviors, and contexts affect the use of language. With a particular emphasis on multilingual communities, this course introduces foundational principles for sociolinguistic survey.

Foundations in Linguistics OR Introduction to Linguistics

Foundations in Linguistics
This course introduces students to the complexity of human language. It is designed to introduce material in three interrelated units, including the nature of language, the grammatical aspects of language, and the applied areas of language. The course focuses on issues such as how the brain and language are related, how language sounds are produced and formed into words and sentences, and how those words and sentences are used to convey meaning. The course also addresses applied areas, such as dialects of English, pragmatics, bilingualism, language acquisition, and language instruction. While covering these various aspects of language, the ways in which the content relates to ministry are addressed.

Introduction to Linguistics
This course introduces the process of language analysis with the goal of enhancing the student’s ability to learn language. Students gain a framework for understanding and identifying the sound systems and grammatical structures of different languages.

Second Language & Culture Acquisition
This course introduces students to the process of language and cultural acquisition among people served on the field. An array of tools and practices are introduced.

Principles of Articulatory & Acoustic Phonetics
Students complete this course at Dallas International University in Dallas, Texas. Using an augmented subset of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), students identify, mimic, and transcribe sounds and prosodies in normal human speech, and describe the mechanisms by which a speaker produces these sounds. Students are also introduced to basic techniques of acoustic analysis.

Principles of Phonological Analysis
Students complete this course at Dallas International University in Dallas, Texas. By the end of the course, students are able to recognize the difference between phonetic (etic) and phonological (emic) data and identify phonological hierarchy and intonation in data. They are able to recognize the use of distinctive features, natural classes, and phonetic plausibility; identify phones in complementary distribution, free variation, and contrast in identical/analogous environment; recognize major phonological processes and common conditioning environments, including adjacent segments, syllables, and larger prosodic units; and apply concepts of tone analysis, and morphophonemics to data.

Principles of Grammatical Analysis I
Students complete this course at Dallas International University in Dallas, Texas. By the end of the course, students are able to write a brief description of a grammatical topic; identify constituent structure, syntactic categories, and grammatical relations within a sentence; analyze data in terms of a set of phrase structure rules and a lexicon; distinguish between indicative, imperative, and interrogative sentences; distinguish between types of objects and obliques; and analyze the structure of noun phrases and verb phrases.

Language & Society
Students complete this course at Dallas International University in Dallas, Texas. Participants consider the relationship between language and society. After successfully completing the course, students are able to articulate the multilingual nature of the world’s societies, the function(s) of language(s) in nations, and how different languages are used alongside one another, including the idea of diglossia. They are also able to identify factors influencing the choice among language varieties for national and educational use. In addition, students are able to explain how language attitudes and domains of language use influence the long-term maintenance and/or shift of language(s) in society. They are able to discuss how all the aforementioned may possibly affect a language development program for a given linguistic community.

Second Language & Culture Acquisition
This course introduces students to the process of language and culture acquisition among people served on the field. An array of tools and practices are introduced.