IAS Invited Lectures Series

dr Jessica Nina Lester
“Micro-analytic approaches for the study of everyday and institutional social interactions”

Abstract: Micro-analytic methodologies used to analyse language-in-use, such as discursive psychology and conversation analysis, afford researchers the opportunity to make visible nuanced and oft taken-for-granted social practices. In this talk, Lester will demonstrate how researchers might take up such approaches to examine constructs and social practices oft thought to be ahistorical, static entities. Drawing upon both discursive psychology and conversation analysis, Lester will point toward how these methodological and theoretical perspectives can be used to closely analyse text and talk across a range of contexts. To illustrate the potentiality of such approaches, she will draw upon a dataset involving disabled children and clinicians who – in their everyday mundane practices – negotiate what it means to be ‘normal’ and ‘competent.’ In doing so, she will point to how microanalytic approaches for studying language-in-use can serve to make visible tacit assumptions about the very meaning(s) of social life and human-ness.

The lecture will be held on Zoom. Please register at https://forms.office.com/r/xj4uHG26ZS to receive the link to the online meeting

The second lecture is by Prof. Judith F. Kroll on Two sides of bilingualism: A lens to the cognitive neuroscience of language and a reflection of our social world to be held online on 18th November at 5 pm CET. This will be the second lecture of the IAS Invited Lecture Series in Bilingualism and Multilingualism organised by the Faculty of English and Bilingualism Matters@Poznań in 2021-22, as convened by prof. Magdalena Wrembel and prof. Anna Ewert.

Prof. Judith F. Kroll
“Two sides of bilingualism: A lens to the cognitive neuroscience of language and a reflection of our social world”

Abstract: In the last two decades there has been an upsurge of research on the bilingual mind and brain. Although the world is multilingual, only recently have cognitive and language scientists come to see that the use of two or more languages provides a unique lens to examine the neural plasticity engaged by language experience. But how? It is now uncontroversial to claim that the bilingual’s two languages are continually active, creating a dynamic interplay across the two languages. But there continues to be controversy about the consequences of that cross-language exchange for how cognitive and neural resources are recruited when a second language is learned and used actively and whether native speakers of a language retain privilege in their first acquired language. In the earliest months of life, minds and brains are tuned differently when exposed to more than one language from birth. That tuning has been hypothesized to open the speech system to new learning. But when initial exposure is to a home language that is not the majority language of the community, the experience common to heritage speakers, the value of bilingualism has been challenged, in part because we are lacking an adequate account of the variation in language experience. In this talk, I illustrate the ways that recent studies have shown that the minds and brains of bilinguals are inherently complex and social, taking into account the variation in contexts in which the two languages are learned and used, and shaping the dynamics of cross-language exchange across the lifespan.

Everyone can attend, but the number of attendees is limited. Please register at: https://forms.office.com/r/590ArgTFFL