Developing (a unit on) Language

I am interested in building a unit situated in a course that takes language as its theme.  In this course I'd like to have a unit on American English dialects, including non-standard or vernacular English vs. standar English vs. academic English, a unit on language and advertising, a unit on gender roles and language use, and others.  I would start the course out with mostly expressive and cognitive discussion of language, and end the semester with more sophisticated critical analysis.

I have not pinned down which unit I would like to do for this class, though the idea of working on a series of lessons/assignments on non-standard or vernacular English (which should be near the beginning of the semester) is interesting to me.