Pedagogical Linguistics - Volume 6, Issue 2, 2025

Introducing students to linguistics before they embark on their undergraduate studies can increase awareness and interest in the field. After documenting my ultimately unsuccessful attempts at creating a standalone course in linguistics at an independent school in Los Angeles, CA, I discuss how I have successfully incorporated linguistics lessons into both my elective classes in the Latin language and my core course in world history. I will show that high school students, particularly older students in advanced classes, are capable of sophisticated linguistic analysis approaching the level of undergraduate student work if they are given proper training. Their progress in the field of linguistics is limited only by the number of hours available to dedicate to linguistics activities in an already packed curriculum. By introducing students to the field of linguistics early in their high school career and revisiting these skills as frequently as possible over the course of four years, I have found that they are more likely to enroll in linguistics classes at the undergraduate level.

This paper presents an overview of some of the opportunities available to children in the United Kingdom to study aspects of historical linguistics, both as part of the approved curricula and as additional learning opportunities. We present an overview of some of the arrangements in the public examinations in England and Wales in three subject areas: English Language; modern foreign languages; and classical languages. We observe that opportunities to study historical linguistics are limited in all of these areas, but there is at least some engagement with the subject. We then describe the United Kingdom Linguistics Olympiad, in particular, some of the kinds of problems in historical linguistics that students are required to solve as part of the competition. Finally, we introduce Maths-Puzz-Ling, a project being developed at the University of Edinburgh as a result of collaboration between linguists and mathematicians, and show how particular problems can simultaneously be used to educate pupils about mathematical concepts and patterns in (historical) linguistics. The benefit of a modified problem-based learning approach to the teaching of historical linguistic concepts is also considered.

The Linguistic Society of America’s “Linguistics in the School Curriculum Committee (LiSC)” has inspired the content in recent years of two outreach projects in Central Ohio: the already-existing Summer Linguistics Institute for Youth Scholars (SLIYS) at Ohio State University and a pilot program at Metro Early College High School (MECHS). We provide a brief history of these programs and the ways in which historical linguistics has been embedded in them, starting from the directive from the LSA and continuing on to the development of these programs and their execution. In doing so, we reflect on the unique considerations one needs to take, and the creative thinking involved, when implementing a High School ((HS) linguistics program, and we discuss our successes and our failures, as well as the future of these programs. Some practical pointers about incorporating historical linguistic material into the classroom are included as well.

We present attempts at reforming the pronunciation of Latin in Slovenia, also analyzing — based on a survey on the use of pronunciation in primary and high schools — the reasons for the lack of their success. In addition, we discuss two related pedagogical projects that involved primary and secondary pupils. Our main conclusion is that the adherence to the traditional pronunciation makes it necessary to readdress the issue of how a more authentic way of Latin pronunciation is to be incorporated in the language instruction. One such attempt was made during the summer school, where we informed students about findings of modern historical linguistics concerning the phonological system of Classical Latin. In addition, we tried to adopt these findings in practice, by following them in reading a part of an authentic Latin text. Our results show that this approach to presenting the classical pronunciation of Latin can be an interesting and well-received part of Latin instruction.

In this paper I investigate the (non)-inclusion of historical linguistics into Greek high schools. The investigation clearly illustrates the fact that, despite recent attempts to incorporate modern linguistic principles and notions in the curriculum of the teaching of Modern Greek, this has not extended to the domain of historical linguistics. Given that Ancient Greek is taught obligatorily to all students in Greek high schools, I focus on the reasons why this emphasis on an ancient language has not paved the way for a linguistically informed curriculum. I argue that linguistics ideologies pervasive in the teaching of Ancient Greek, such as the myth of a single ‘unitary’ Greek encompassing all its synchronic and diachronic varieties, actually prevent (instead of facilitating) the incorporation of elements of historical linguistics into the subject, such as possible causes of language change, as well as its types and mechanisms. The investigation calls for a much more systematic effort on the part of linguistics in the re-writing of the relevant curriculum, in the fight against linguistically obsolete but still very much present language myths in the educational environments and in the Greek-speaking community.

The article compares linguistic nationalism theories in conjunction with the reception of historical linguistic findings (especially those about linguistic families) in instruction books of secondary education in Greece and Turkey. It is suggested that Greek linguistic nationalism can be described as “introvert” in the sense that it repudiates or disregards the genetic association of Greek to the rest of the Indo-European languages whereas Turkish linguistic nationalism is accordingly classified as “extrovert” since it emphasizes the linguistic link of Turkish to the rest of the Turkic language family and seeks to expand this connection to the theoretically dubious (Ural-)Altaic (macro)family. This methodological dichotomy between introvert and extrovert linguistic nationalism is justified by comparing how the linguistic concept of a language family is presented in history and language handbooks in both countries.

In this study, we look at how language change is presented in two commonly used textbooks for Norwegian lower secondary school. Through thematic content analysis, we look at how linguistic change is presented as opposed to purely synchronic descriptions, as well as how linguistic changes are exemplified. We also look at which language periods are emphasized and how they are discussed. Our findings show that the textbooks mostly discuss languages as static systems and underemphasize how and why languages change. The changes that are presented are overwhelmingly lexical, while phonological, morphological, and syntactic changes are rarely mentioned. The explanations for change provided by the textbooks are mostly external to the linguistic system, such as language contact and politics. Lastly, the descriptions of language tend to be graphocentric. We discuss how this might contribute to a static and normative view of language among students.