Teaching "Language and Home"

In Spring 2024, we led a seminar entitled “Language and Home” for 18 undergraduate and graduate students from design and linguistics at a large public R1 university located at the geographical and cultural crossroads that is Kentucky. As a space historically where many cultural paths crossed, the Commonwealth provides an excellent place for the study of domestic styles and linguistic varieties. As faculty housed in two different colleges within the university (School of Interiors, College of Design and Department of Linguistics, College of Arts & Sciences), we conceptualized and carried out the course working together across disciplines to deliver a blended teaching approach that emphasized conceptual frames for language and design studies, visual and textual analysis, field work, conversation, the development of creative student work products, and reflection at several moments during the term. Purposefully working with a transdisciplinary mindset, we experimented with pedagogical tactics to bring together the diverse student group to examine the home as the most fundamental set of spaces where human life unfolds. We plan a book, Language and Home, to examine the places where we dwell and the words we use in those spaces to shape identity and layer them with meaning.