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OMSI Science Pub: Tongue Tied - Linguistic Diversity in American English
The following description was submitted by the event organizer.
Think you don’t have an accent? Go bananas over how kids these days talk? Sounds like you need some linguistics in your life. In this lecture, sociolinguist Kara Becker will offer a positive perspective on the rich patterns in how we talk. The lecture will cover basic linguistics, “facts of life,” including that all languages change and vary, creating meaningful differences that allow humans to construct their social selves. Learn about how vowels are made and about current sound changes happening along the West Coast (yes, you do have an accent). And, consider the stakes of beliefs about language, particularly for speakers who don’t align with common notions of “correct” speech.
With Dr. Kara Becker, Professor of Linguistics at Reed College
Kara Becker, PhD, is the Professor of Linguistics at Reed College. Becker is a sociolinguist, a variationist, and a dialectologist, whose scholarship concerns regional and social varieties of American English. Kara received a B.A. in Linguistics and an M.A. in Educational Linguistics from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in Linguistics from New York University. She joined the Reed faculty in 2010 and teaches courses on language and society, including Dialects of English, Contact Languages, Language, Sex, Gender and Sexuality, and African American English. And yes, she is always excited about sociolinguistics.