David Crystal to visit UTSA

As part of the Brackenridge Distinguished Visiting Lecture Series and the COLFA Lecture Series, David Crystal will be presenting 3 lectures in October 2009.

Brackenridge Lecture I
Pronouncing Shakespeare.
Wednesday, October 28
Based on Professor Crystal’s work with Shakespeare's Globe in 2004 and 2005, this lecture will present a fresh reading of some Early Modern English texts, and will explore the implications of his phonological analysis of these works, such as new insights on rhymes and puns. The Sonnets will also figure heavily in this presentation, in this anniversary year.
7:00-9:00 pm Assembly Room, JPL 4.03.12
Co-sponsored by the Friends of Shakespeare and the Crittenden
Endowment Fund


COLFA Series Lecture
Language Death: Writing the Obituary of Languages?
Thursday, October 29
Half the languages of the world will die out within the next century. This talk reviews the way languages are dying, asks why, and then asks what can be done. It presents the arguments why people should be concerned, drawing a parallel with other ecological domains.
6:00- 8:30 UC Ballroom II
Sponsored by the College of Liberal and Fine Arts


Brackenridge Lecture II
In Search of English: By Hook or By Crook
Friday, October 30
A lecture based on the 2007 book, a linguistic travelogue of a journey to find out more about the fascinating variety and history of the English language, in Britain and overseas. The talk covers accents and dialects, place names and etymologies, introduces some of the people and places encountered, from Lady Godiva to Bricklehampton, and reflects on the language's continually changing and elusive character.
1:00-2:30 pm University Room, BB 2.06.04
Co-sponsored by the Honors College, the Department of Modern Languages and
Literatures, and the Department of Bicultural-Bilingual Studies

David Crystal is one of the world’s foremost authorities on language and linguistics. He is the author of the extremely successful Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language (2nd ed. 1997), Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language (2nd ed. 2003), and English as a Global Language (2nd ed. 2003). An internationally renowned writer, journal editor, lecturer and broadcaster, he received an Order of the British Empire award in 1995 for his services to the study and teaching of the English language. He has written extensively on the language of Shakespeare, including Think on my Words: Exploring Shakespeare’s Language (2008), Pronouncing Shakespeare (2005), and Shakespeare’s Words (2004). He has also published books on Language and the Internet (2006) and Txtng: the Gr8 Db8 (2008), on such fields as intonation and stylistics, and on the application of linguistics to religious, educational and clinical contexts. Of his approximately 100 books, the UTSA library holds 35.