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Four sure-to-be-amazing talks on language are coming to central Texas on January 8 and all are invited!

The four speakers include two of our Language-Logistocracy, linguists and popularizers extraordinaire Ben Zimmer and John McWhorter. Wanna know how English is changing? They'll tell you. Third, Stanford Linguist Eve Clark, who's somehow managed to publish two books this year, while I'm struggling with one blog post. She'll tell you Why You Should Talk to Your Kids. (Because they haven't cleaned their room?) And fourth is my UT Austin colleague and collaborator, the eminent social psychologist Jamie Pennebaker. I can't tell you what he's going to say. But, worryingly, he can tell you what I'm going to say. Best if he lets you know why you should be afraid in his own words :

The talks will immediately follow the Linguistic Society of America's annual meeting in downtown Austin TX, Jan 5-8.

Full details of the public lectures are at this link, but here's what you need to know to attend:

WHE(N/RE): Sunday, January 8, 2017, 1PM to 3PM, JW Marriott Austin (110 East 2nd Street)
COST: General audience: $10 / Senior citizens, UT faculty, LSA meeting attendees: $5 / K-12 & University students: FREE (tickets required)
GET TICKETS: HERE.

This is the first public facing event of its sort that the Linguistics Society of America has organized, and it's a really exciting development. We have to get the word out! So PLEASE PLEASE tell (or send a link to this post to) anyone you know in or around Austin who might be interested in language or linguistics: high schoolers or others thinking about a linguistics major, writers, parents wondering about their kids' speech,… well, who isn't interested in language? And who doesn't want to know how to read minds?

December 21, 2016 @ 5:42 pm · Filed by David Beaver under Announcements, Awesomeness, Language change, Psychology of language

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