Spring Colloquium
Spring Colloquium
UNC Linguistics Spring Colloquium 2023
Saturday, March 25th, 2023
Every spring, the Linguistics Graduate Student Association (LGSA) at UNC-Chapel Hill puts on its annual Spring Colloquium. We invite fellow linguists from all over to present and discuss current topics of interest in the field in an all-day conference. The Colloquium is free for all who present or attend; there is no registration fee. The conference will be held Saturday, March 25th, 2023 at Gardner Hall 309 from 10am – 5pm. Dr. Savithry Namboodiripad, from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, is this year’s keynote speaker; find her talk abstract below. The colloquium is also accessible via Zoom at https://go.unc.edu/LingColloquium (password: lingcolloq).
Keynote Speaker
Savithry Namboodiripad, Ph.D.
Professor at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor
What’s a “native speaker”? Rejecting essentialist constructs as a way to lead to a better Linguistics
Abstract: Whose language are we studying as linguists? Whose linguistic practices, knowledge, and ideologies count? Often, linguists focus on “native speakers/signers,” though the utility and validity of that category has been questioned for generations and across disciplines (Ferguson & Gumperz 1960, Paikeday 1985, Rajagopalan 1884, Love & Ansaldo 2010, Grammon & Babel 2021, Dewaele et al. 2021, et alia). This talk builds on collaborative work (Cheng et al. 2021, Cheng et al. 2022, Namboodiripad & Henner 2022, Birkeland et al. submitted) which questions this notion and related constructs, and asks (1) what can we gain when we let go of this construct in our research practices, and (2) what do we have to lose?
