Presented By: Department of Linguistics
Martin Luther King Jr. Colloquium with Lenore A. Grenoble
"When the dream falters: The role of the linguist and how to do, and undo, things with words"
Lenore A. Grenoble is the John Matthews Manly Distinguished Service Professor and Chair of the Department of Linguistics and Humanities Collegiate Division and the Acting Director of Graduate Studies for Slavic Linguistics, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Chicago.
Lenore Grenoble: "When the dream falters: The role of the linguist and how to do, and undo, things with words"
Abstract
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968. 15 years later, in 1983, President Ronald Reagan signed into law a national holiday in commemoration of his life and death. The law went into effect three years later, with a bumpy history; it was not until the year 2000 that all 50 states celebrated the holiday under this name, with opponents citing a number of reasons ranging from King’s alleged communist ties to claims of his overall historical insignificance.
Dr. King had a dream, a dream that his “four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character” (King 1963).
Current world events give reason to question the status of Dr. King’s vision today This year, as part of the official commemoration of his life and death, it is time to take stock of where we are, where we have been, and where we are going As a linguist, I consider this question of judgment not just on skin color, but also on language, a key indicator of identity.
In this talk I examine what we do, as speakers and listeners, with words, and how as linguists we can lay these devices bare so that we can “undo” some of them. There are ample examples here in the US, but I take a broader, international stance and draw on data from my own fieldwork in Russian, and on indigenous languages in the Arctic and in Africa, and consider three interrelated practices:
1. Naming practices (including the name of this very holiday)
2. Social indexing: creating stereotypes and using them
3. Language (in)equality and linguistic rights
As linguists –be it as teachers or students of linguistics—we have a particular responsibility to educate the public, and one another, about what we do with words. I echo Dr. King in wondering how successful we have been in fulfilling our obligations as educators, and think about how we can do better:
At this point, I often wonder whether or not education is fulfilling its purpose. A great majority of the so-called educated people do not think logically and scientifically. Even the press, the classroom, the platform, and the pulpit in many instances do not give us objective and unbiased truths. To save man from the morass of propaganda, in my opinion, is one of the chief aims of education. Education must enable one to sift and weigh evidence, to discern the true from the false, the real from the unreal, and the facts from the fiction.
-Martin Luther King, Jr. (1947)
Lenore Grenoble: "When the dream falters: The role of the linguist and how to do, and undo, things with words"
Abstract
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968. 15 years later, in 1983, President Ronald Reagan signed into law a national holiday in commemoration of his life and death. The law went into effect three years later, with a bumpy history; it was not until the year 2000 that all 50 states celebrated the holiday under this name, with opponents citing a number of reasons ranging from King’s alleged communist ties to claims of his overall historical insignificance.
Dr. King had a dream, a dream that his “four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character” (King 1963).
Current world events give reason to question the status of Dr. King’s vision today This year, as part of the official commemoration of his life and death, it is time to take stock of where we are, where we have been, and where we are going As a linguist, I consider this question of judgment not just on skin color, but also on language, a key indicator of identity.
In this talk I examine what we do, as speakers and listeners, with words, and how as linguists we can lay these devices bare so that we can “undo” some of them. There are ample examples here in the US, but I take a broader, international stance and draw on data from my own fieldwork in Russian, and on indigenous languages in the Arctic and in Africa, and consider three interrelated practices:
1. Naming practices (including the name of this very holiday)
2. Social indexing: creating stereotypes and using them
3. Language (in)equality and linguistic rights
As linguists –be it as teachers or students of linguistics—we have a particular responsibility to educate the public, and one another, about what we do with words. I echo Dr. King in wondering how successful we have been in fulfilling our obligations as educators, and think about how we can do better:
At this point, I often wonder whether or not education is fulfilling its purpose. A great majority of the so-called educated people do not think logically and scientifically. Even the press, the classroom, the platform, and the pulpit in many instances do not give us objective and unbiased truths. To save man from the morass of propaganda, in my opinion, is one of the chief aims of education. Education must enable one to sift and weigh evidence, to discern the true from the false, the real from the unreal, and the facts from the fiction.
-Martin Luther King, Jr. (1947)
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