[RNLD] for those in Melbourne, a lecture

[Nick Thieberger]

"How Language is Lived, Loved and Lost in a Globalizing World"
Professor Mary Louise Pratt, New York University

Linguists tell us humans share an innate ability to learn language,
demonstrated most clearly by the fact that children appear to acquire
language automatically and effortlessly. Among adults, this ability
varies on an individual basis. This lecture disputes this approach,
arguing that all language learning whether of one's first or of
subsequent languages, requires five conditions in abundance: time,
effort, desire, input, and possibilities for use. Literacy requires a
sixth, instruction. Languages live and die according to the
availability of these conditions. The difficulty of learning second
and third languages is also determined by their presence or absence.
This lecture will explore and elaborate on these five conditions in
relation to contemporary global phenomena of migration, indigeneity,
and warfare, as well as language death, linguistic revival, and
translingualism.

Mary Louise Pratt is Silver Professor in the Department of Social and
Cultural Analysis and the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at New
York University, where she teaches Latin American literature and
cultural theory. She holds degrees in comparative literature and
linguistics from the University of Toronto, the University of
Illinois, and Stanford University. She has published extensively on
the subjects of Latin American women's writing; travel literature and
imperialism; language and militarization; and modernity and
neoliberalism.

When:
Thursday, 9 August 2012 | 6.30pm

Where:
Public Lecture Theatre
Old Arts Building
The University of Melbourne
PARKVILLE VIC 3010

http://alumni.online.unimelb.edu.au/s/1182/index.aspx?sid=1182&pgid=2409&gid=1&cid=3552&ecid=3552&post_id=0