"Globalization & the World-Wide Spread of English in Historical Perspectives" a talk by Salikoko S. Mufwene at UChicago Center in India Private Limited, DLF Capitol Point, Baba Kharak Singh Marg > 5pm to 6:30pm on 18th December 2014

Time : 5:00 pm - 6:30 pm Add to Calendar 18-12-2014 17:00:00 18-12-2014 18:30:00 68 "Globalization & the World-Wide Spread of English in Historical Perspectives" a talk by Salikoko S. Mufwene Event Page : http://goo.gl/taW4DN UChicago Center in India Private Limited, DLF Capitol Point, Baba Kharak Singh Marg, New Delhi -110001 DD/MM/YYYY

Entry : Free (Seating on First-Come First-Served basis)
Registration required, register at : 
Online : goo.gl/7wuFQU

Venue : UChicago Center in India Private Limited, DLF Capitol Point, Baba Kharak Singh Marg, New Delhi -110001
Venue info : www.uchicago.in | Map | Nearest Metro Stations - Rajiv Chowk, Gate No. 6 (Yellow Line and Blue Line) & 'Shivaji Stadium(Orange Line)' 

Area : Connaught Place (CP)

Event Description : "Globalization and the World-Wide Spread of English in Historical Perspectives" a talk by Salikoko S. Mufwene.

The spread of English around the world, especially over the past century, has often been compared to that of Latin at the peak of the Roman Empire and even after the collapse of the latter. In both cases the process has been associated with, inter alia, imperial expansion, the diffusion of know-how, and international trade. In both cases the evolution has also been differential, though in quite different ways (to be articulated in the lecture). On the other hand, Latin spread first as a lingua franca and then mutated into the Romance languages, thus into a number of new vernaculars that displaced most of the Celtic languages of the former southwestern Roman provinces. English has spread both as a vernacular, in places that remain in Inner Circle and in parts of which it has mutated into creoles, and as a lingua franca in the Outer and Expanding Circles. Braj Kachru, an Indian native, who developed the typology adopted here and in the literature on World Englishes, drew attention to the fact that English speakers around the world are not all equal; some have been considered as more legitimate than others. Salikoko S. Mufwene will use this comparison to explain why economic globalization is a heterogeneous process and is not making the world uniform and will articulate in the lecture some of the “ecological” factors that account for this differential evolution.

Salikoko S. Mufwene is the Frank J. McLoraine Distinguished Service Professor of Linguistics and the College; Professor, Committee on Evolutionary Biology; and Professor, Committee on the Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science at the University of Chicago.  He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1979 and has been at Chicago since 1992.  His research of the past twenty years has been primarily on morphosyntactic and semantic characteristics of Gullah, African-American Vernacular English, Jamaican Creole, and English. However, in recent years he has focused more on the development of "Atlantic creoles" (lexified by European languages), Kikongo-Kituba, Lingala, and on questions of language evolution.  Prof. Mufwene has authored numerous publications, manyavailable for download, and innovated several UChicago classes.

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