As I walked into my classes yesterday (first classes of the new semester), the room was very quiet. Nobody was talking to anyone else. Most students were checking their phones. At the end of the class, things were different. People were chatting, making lunch plans, exchanging contact information. What had changed? We had become a class, a group of people with a common interest. We had heard from everyone about where they were from and why they were enrolled in this class. We heard about people’s dogs (and the occasional cat) and families and, since this is a linguistics class, favorite words. Everyone sat next to someone they didn’t know and introduced that person to the class (after chatting with them for a couple of minutes). It may not have been linguistics proper, but isn’t that what language is all about — building connections and sharing ideas? Conjunctions and prepositions can wait until week 2.
