[lg policy] Fwd: [PLC general] Temple TESOL Language and Linguistics Speaker Series

Tue Sep 10 19:16:05 UTC 2013

Forwarded
From: plc-teach at groups.sas.upenn.edu

 *Monday, September 16, 3:30, Kiva Auditorium, Temple University
Dr. John Lucy, University of Chicago
Title : Language Diversity, Cultural Practice, and the Development of Mind *

*Abstract : *
Language holds a special place in human life. It is distinctive of our
species. It also provides the dominant medium for social interaction,
helping to enable cultural traditions. Likewise, it provides an important
medium of psychological representation, helping to constitute the
individual human mind. Thus language, culture, and mind are intricately
bound together at the core of what it is to be human. Though few doubt the
importance of language, we still debate just exactly how large a shaping
role language plays in this mix and in precisely what ways. Since there is
no one universal language but rather myriad individual languages all
differing from one another in important respects, one perennial debate
concerns just how important these differences between languages are in the
mediation of culture and mind. The contention that the particular language
we speak influences the way we experience and think about the world has
been called the linguistic relativity proposal . This talk will present an
overview of recent thinking and research on this topic. The first part
characterizes the relativity proposal both conceptually and historically,
showing how current approaches fit into our own intellectual tradition. The
second part presents some key contemporary findings, showing how research
gets done and the range of language-specific effects on thinking that have
been identified. The third part describes recent psychological research
with d eaf people, children, and bilinguals, seeking to uncover the
mechanisms underlying language effects. The final closing section suggests
how language form, cultural practice, and individual cognition enter into a
dialogue during child development to create a characteristically human
orientation to the world.

*Bio : *
*John Lucy* is the William Benton Professor in the Departments of
Psychology and of Comparative Human Development at the University of
Chicago. He has done over thirty years of ethnographic, linguistic, and
psychological research among the Mayan-speaking people of the Yucatan
region of Mexico, which resulted in two ground-breaking books Language
Diversity and Thought (Cambridge University Press, 1992) and Grammatical
Categories and Cognition (Cambridge University Press, 1992). Lucy has been
Guggenheim Fellow, a Mellon Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the
Behavioral Sciences, and a Visiting Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for
Psycholinguistics. He has received major research grants from the National
Endowment for the Humanities, the National Institutes of Mental Health, the
Department of Education, the Social Science Research Council, and the
Spencer Foundation.

 *Thursday, September 19, 3:30, Kiva Auditorium, Temple University
Dr. Ofelia Garcia, City University of New York
Title : The transformative power of translanguaging in schools *

*Abstract : *
This presentation will contribute to our understandings of the
transformative power of translanguaging in classrooms with linguistically
diverse students. I start by reviewing the meanings of translanguaging and
its potential to produce alternative representations, while engaging the
voices, identities and cognitive functioning of linguistically diverse
students. I draw examples from NYC school cases to contextualize how
teachers with different characteristics and in different educational
programs draw on translanguaging as a resource. I also share our
CUNY-NYSIEB work, as university scholars, school leaders and teachers
collaborate to improve the education of those we call “emergent
bilinguals.”

*Bio : *
*Ofelia García *is Professor in the Ph.D. programs of Urban Education and
of Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Literatures and Languages at the Graduate
Center of the City University of New York . She has been Professor of
Bilingual Education at Columbia University´s Teachers College, Dean of the
School of Education at the Brooklyn Campus of Long Island University, and
Professor of Education at The City College of New York. Among her recent
books are Bilingual Education in the 21st Century: A Global Perspective ;
Educating Emergent Bilinguals (with J. Kleifgen), Handbook of Language and
Ethnic Identity (with J. Fishman), Negotiating Language Policies in
Schools: Educators as Policymakers (with K. Menken), Imagining Multilingual
Schools (with T. Skutnabb-Kangas and M. Torres-Guzmán), and A Reader in
Bilingual Education (with C. Baker). She is the Associate General Editor of
the International Journal of the Sociology of Language . García was the
recipient of the 2008 NYSABE Gladys Correa Award, is a Fellow of the
Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study in South Africa, and has been a
Fulbright Scholar, and a Spencer Fellow of the U.S. National Academy of
Education.

_______________________________________________
This message came to you by way of the PLC-general mailing list:
PLC-general at groups.sas.upenn.edu
To manage your subscription, visit this web page:
https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/plc-general

-- 
=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+

 Harold F. Schiffman

Professor Emeritus of
 Dravidian Linguistics and Culture
Dept. of South Asia Studies
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305

Phone:  (215) 898-7475
Fax:  (215) 573-2138

Email:  haroldfs at gmail.com
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/

-------------------------------------------------
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lgpolicy-list/attachments/20130910/6b624953/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
_______________________________________________
This message came to you by way of the lgpolicy-list mailing list
lgpolicy-list at groups.sas.upenn.edu
To manage your subscription unsubscribe, or arrange digest format: https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/lgpolicy-list