One of the defining characteristics of modernist literature is its linguistic self- consciousness – its engagement with the fact that we live in “a world of words.” In this course, we examine the work of twentieth-century and contemporary writers who violate linguistic norms in order to question social, psychological and philosophical norms. These violations raise questions about the role of the individual in society, challenge the notion of a stable, cohesive self, and break down accepted category distinctions such as concrete/abstract and real/imaginary. Each week, we look at the basic elements of one of the subfields of linguistics (morphology, semantics, syntax, sociolinguistics, etc.), reading philosophers and stylistic critics such as H.P. Grice, John Searle and Roman Jakobson, and applying their concepts, focusing on the ways in which linguistic disruptions embody thematic concerns in the works of major twentieth-century literary figures such as Samuel Beckett, William Faulkner, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Franz Kafka, Marianne Moore, Alain Robbe-Grillet and Wallace Stevens, and contemporaries such as Lydia Davis, Cathy Park Hong and James Kelman. We also discuss effective use of language in academic writing; students write several essays, and we examine excerpts in class, considering issues of structure, style and tone.