- Nominations are now open for many LSA Awards and for 2013 LSA Fellows.
- Read the Call for Abstracts for the 2013 Annual Meeting (Boston, January 3-6).
- View the Call for Workshop Proposals for the 2013 Linguistic Institute.
LSA Bulletin
No. 189 October 2005
Year of Languages Radio Series
As part of the "Year of Languages" (YOL) celebration, the College of Charleston and National Museum of Language have jointly sponsored development and distribution of a series of 52 radio spots on languages and linguistics. The spots are five-minutes long and address a wide range of questions that a general audience might have about language. The materials were written by 48 language experts from 23 states (including a good many members of LSA) and the United Kingdom under the direction of Dr. Rick Rickerson of the College of Charleston. Information about the series, including brief biographies of the authors, can be found at: www.cofc.edu/linguist.
The series has been aired on public radio stations in several states as well as on campus radio stations. It is now available for use by language professionals as part of a curriculum, a motivator in the spirit of the YOL, or in many other ways. High schools have played the spots through their intercom systems; a sixth grade teacher has used them as part of a Language Arts class; universities are using them to supplement courses that prepare new language teachers. Above all, their purpose is to raise awareness about languages and the language profession during this year of celebration.
Audio files for the series are available on the website of the American
Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages and its YOL
site. The materials are also available on compact disks at very low
cost ($9.65 for a set of four disks, plus postage) from: Georgia Schlau,
Director, Michael Pincus Language Resource Center (schlaug
cofc.edu),
College of Charleston. If you wish to have the series broadcast in your
area or on your campus, send the name of the station and e-mail address
of the station manager--or other questions or comments about the series--to
Dr. Rickerson aterickersoncomcast.net.
Programs To Air in the Coming Weeks on South Carolina public radio:
43) Oct 27 How close is Portuguese related to Spanish? (Ana Maria Carvalho)
44) Nov 3 TBA
45) Nov 10 Is a slip of the tongue really a slip of the brain? (Henk Haarmann)
46) Nov 17 What's bilingualism? (Dora Johnson)
47) Nov 24 Why do languages die? (Christopher Moseley)
48) Dec 1 Why revitalize a threatened language? (Akira Yamamoto)
49) Dec 8 Does anyone here speak Klingon? (Christopher Moseley)
50) Dec 15 Why do people fight over language? (Paul Garrett)
51) Dec 22 Can you make a living loving language? (Richard Jackson)
52) Dec 29 What's the future of language research? (Eric Bakovic)
Programs aired earlier in 2005:
1. Jan 6 What's special about language? (Robert Rodman)
2. Jan 13 How many languages are there in the world? (Paul Lewis)
3. Jan 20 What was the original language? (Barry Hilton)
4. Jan 27 Do all languages come from the same source? (Allan Bomhard)
5. Feb 3 What's the "Year of Languages?" (Marty Abbott/Steve Ackley
6. Feb 10 Where did English come from? (John Algeo)
7. Feb 17 Whatever happened to Esperanto? (E. Rickerson)
8. Feb 24 Is British English superior to ours? (Orin Hargraves)
9. Mar 3 Do all southerners have the same dialect? (Walt Wolfram)
10. Mar 10 Is there a language crisis in America? (Catherine Ingold)
11. Mar 17 What does it take to learn a language well? (Nina Garrett)
12. Mar 24 What's the history of language study in the U.S.? (June Phillips)
13. Mar 31 Do all Arabs speak the same language? (Jerry Lampe)
14. Apr 7 Is sign language a universal language? (Leila Monaghan)
15. Apr 14 Are dialects dying in the U.S.? (Walt Wolfram)
16. Apr 21 Why do languages change? (John McWhorter)
17. Apr 28 Is pidgin English just bad English? (John Lipski)
18. May 5 Was German almost the language of America? (Nancy Nenno)
19. May 12 How do babies learn their mother tongue? (Roberta Golinkoff/Kathy
Hirsh-Pasek)
20. May 19 Can monolingualism be cured? (Katie Sprang)
21) May 26 Why is Chinese so hard to learn? (Barry Hilton)
22) June 2 Should we teach languages in elementary school? (Gladys Lipton))
23) June 9 Where did writing come from? (Peter T. Daniels)
24) June 1 What causes foreign accents? (Steven Weinberger)
25) June 23 How can you keep languages in a museum? (Amelia Murdoch)
26) June 30 How many native American languages are there? (Marianne Mithun)
27) July 7 Should we be studying Russian? (Ben Rifkin)
28) July 14 Does language influence the way we think? (Geoffrey Pullum)
29) July 21 How are dictionaries made? (Erin McKean)
30) July 28 What's Cajun and where did it come from? (Robyn Holman)
31) Aug 4 What's the "right" way to put words together? (Dennis
Preston)
32) Aug 11 What's the future of Spanish in the U.S.? (Maria Carreira)
33) Aug 18 When is a dialect really a separate language? (Tucker Childs)
34) Aug 25 Is Japanese related to Chinese? (Blaine Ericson)
35) Sep 1 Why are linguists interested in Icelandic? (Pardee Lowe)
36) Sep 8 Is Swahili the language of Africa? (Donald Osborn)
37) Sep 15 Why is language a national security issue? (Michael Erard)
38) Sep 22 Is each person's language unique? (Robert Rodman)
39) Sep 29 How good is machine translation? (David Savignac)
40) Oct 6 Why do we need translators if we have dictionaries? (Kevin Hendzel)
41) Oct 13 Who speaks what languages in the U.S.? (David Goldberg)
42) Oct 20 Why Study Abroad? (Sheri Spaine Long)
Back to the October 2005 LSA Bulletin
