Kelly Wright Talk on Linguistic Justice

Experimental sociolinguist & lexicographer Dr. Kelly Elizabeth Wright will offer a guest talk titled “Censoring the Self” that considers censorship both from the perspective of an individual language user, navigating their social environment, and from the perspective of local & legal language policies. Wright will illustrate that we are aware that the way language is used engages potent & omnipresent Standard language ideologies. Such awareness makes all thought, speech, writing, and sign relevant in the everyday – and often marks non-normative existence (such as being Queer, Black, foreign, differently abled, or female) as unintelligent, crude, or even criminal. Wright will invite consideration of what a general preference for assimilationist linguistic production portends for the future of free speech, academic freedom, and self-determination writ large.