(Professor of Linguistics at the University of Sussex)聽visited CU-Boulder to share her research on American and British varieties of English.
"Separated by a Common Language?:聽The complicated relationship between American & British English".
When: Monday, April 16th, 4:00-6:00PM
Where: Hellems 199
Refreshments will be served!
Co-sponsored by the Departments of Linguistics, Communication, and English
Abstract: When faced with British English, Americans are apt to be impressed and are often made a bit insecure about their own linguistic abilities. When thinking about American English, Britons often express dismissiveness or fear. This has been going on for nearly 300 years, developing into a complex mythology of British鈥揂merican linguistic relations. This talk looks into the current state of the 鈥渟pecial relationship鈥� between the two national standards. How did we get to the point that the BBC publishes headlines like 鈥淗ow Americanisms are killing the English language鈥� while Americans tweet 鈥淓verything sounds better in a British accent鈥�? The answer is in a broad set of problematic beliefs. We鈥檒l look at how different the two national Englishes are (and why they鈥檙e not more different), why neither has claim to being older than the other, and why technology isn鈥檛 making us all speak or write the same English.聽
About the speaker:聽Lynne Murphy is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Sussex in Brighton, England. Since 2006, her alter ego Lynneguist has written the . There, she reflects on UK-US linguistic differences from the perspective of an American linguist in England, while fighting the good fight against linguistic myths and prejudice. She continues that fight in (Penguin, 2018).聽