Event Date
Lunch & Workshop @ 12 PM in Sproul 912
Presentation @ 3:30PM in Olson 53A
In many approaches to formal instruction, a foreign language is routinely conceptualized as a fixed code of conventionalized form-meaning pairings resembling Saussure’s well known concept of “langue.” In addition, the “language” is represented as a related but separate object with respect to the foreign “culture.” As such, despite the recent 'social turn' in applied linguistics, language study largely ignores the complex relationship between language, culture and thought. In this talk, I will argue that language programs should seek to raise students’ understanding of language use as culturally influenced meaning-making.
Carl S. Blyth (PhD, Cornell University) is Associate Professor of French Linguistics and Director of the Center of Open Educational Resources and Language Learning (COERLL) at the University of Texas at Austin (USA). His research interests include computer-mediated discourse, cross-cultural and intercultural pragmatics, pedagogical grammar and open educational approaches to language learning. He has published on metalinguistic awareness, the affordances of social reading for L2 literacy development, native and non-native role models for language learning, L2 narrative discourse, online stance taking and interactive frames in L2 discourse. He has authored or co-authored several books and book chapters as well as journal articles in venues such as the Modern Language Journal, CALICO Journal, and Journal of Educational Computing Research. Most recently, he has published a co-edited book with Dale Koike called Dialogue in Multilingual and Multimodal Communities (2015, John Benjamins). He currently serves on the editorial board of Intercultural Pragmatics and Issues in Language Program Direction.
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