West Virginia University’s David C. Hardesty, Jr. Festival of Ideas series will address African American English, the most controversial and misunderstood variety of speech in the United States, during a documentary and panel discussion titled “Talking Black in America” April 10 at 7 p.m. in the Mountainlair Ballrooms.
The documentary showcases the history and symbolic role of language in the lives
of African Americans and highlights its tremendous impact on the speech and culture
of the United States. It also addresses the persistent misinformation about African
American speech and situates it as an integral part of the historical and
cultural legacy of all Americans.
A panel discussion, led by WVU linguistics professor Kirk Hazen, will immediately follow, and focus on the social complexity of one of the most stigmatized dialects in the United States, as well as explore the impact of language discrimination in people’s lives.
•
Kirk Hazen – Moderator
Kirk Hazen is
Professor of Linguistics at West Virginia University, where he is the founding
director of the West Virginia Dialect Project and a Benedum Distinguished Scholar
in the Humanities. His research, teaching, and linguistic service are all centered
on social and linguistic patterns of language variation. His most recent book is
An Introduction to Language (Wiley 2015), and he is co-editor (with Janet Holmes)
of
Research Methods in Sociolinguistics
(Wiley 2014).
•
Renee Blake - Panelist
Renée A. Blake (Stanford PhD) is a second-generation Caribbean American by
way of Trinidad and Venezuela. She is an Associate Professor in the Departments
of Linguistics and Social & Cultural Analysis at New York University. Her research
examines language contact, race, ethnicity and class with a focus on African-American
English, Caribbean English Creoles and New York City English. She is the recipient
of several grants including Fulbright, Rockefeller, and National Science Foundation.
In 2010, she was awarded the Martin Luther King Jr. Faculty Award at New York University.
She has also served as a consultant to organizations including Disney and the Ford
Foundation.
•
Walt Wolfram – Panelist
Walt Wolfram is William C. Friday Distinguished University Professor at North
Carolina State University, where he also directs the Language and Life Project.
He has pioneered research on social and ethnic dialects of American English since
the 1960s, including early research on African American speech in the urban North
and later work on its regional distribution in the rural South. He has authored
or co-authored more than 20 books and over 300 articles, including four books and
more than 100 articles on African American Language. He has served as a linguistic
consultant to Children’s Television Workshop, the producers of Sesame Street, and
been the executive producer of more than 10 television documentaries on language
differences in American society, including several Emmy-winning documentaries.
He has also served as President of the Linguistic Society of America and the American
Dialect Society, and the Southeastern Conference on Linguistics, and received numerous
awards, including the North Carolina Award (the highest award given to a citizen
of North Carolina), the Caldwell Humanities Laureate from the NC Humanities Council,
and the Linguistics, Language and the Public Award from the Linguistic Society
of America.
The David C. Hardesty Jr. Festival of Ideas was created in 1995 by former WVU president David C. Hardesty Jr. and is produced by University Events. It was inspired by events he organized as WVU’s student body president in the 1960s. Today, the lecture series spans the academic year and engages a diverse group of newsmakers, public figures, thought leaders and WVU’s own superstars.
The event is free and open to the public.
-WVU-
lm-ak/04/05/18
CONTACT: Lisa Martin, University Events
304.293.8021;
lisa.martin@mail.wvu.edu
Follow @WVUToday on Twitter.