News-Board-Eintrag:
Tales from the Linguist’s Mecca: The 2009 Linguistic Institute at Berkeley
| News-Kategorie: | |
| Eingestellt von: | Claudia Weber |
| Eingestellt am: | 11.08.2009 |
Amongst the world’s leading universities, Berkeley holds a special place. Dignified, eminent intellectuals will fondly reminisce about the now legendary student uprisings of the 1960s, Malcolm X and the Free Speech movement, whilst others will scathe the university’s role in the development of the nuclear bomb and yet others will mock Berkeley’s unabashedly liberal and egalitarian environment as “The People’s Republic of Berkeley”. In short, The University of California at Berkeley has become a legendary, almost mythical institution of sorts. For linguists, though, Berkeley offers yet another attraction: its Linguistics Department unites some of the finest, most influential scholars in the field. Founded in 1901 as the United States’ first Linguistics Department, it has been leading the field ever since. Today, prominent figures such as Charles Fillmore and George Lakoff ensure the department’s continuing success.  So when the Linguistic Society of America (LSA) announced that its biannual summer school, the Linguistic Institute, would be held at Berkeley in 2009, I was overjoyed. The Linguistic Institute is in itself one-of-a-kind, bringing together the world’s leading linguists and junior scholars, who spend 6 weeks every other summer discussing the latest developments and approaches in the field. For all these reasons, participating in a Linguistic Institute at Berkeley was sort of a dream-come-true to a nerdy linguist like me. So thus it was that thanks to a generous GCSC travel grant and holiday allowance, I boarded a flight to San Francisco in late June to spend the next four weeks as a Visiting Scholar at Berkeley and the Linguistic Institute.  At the Institute, I took classes with George Lakoff, Mark Turner, Gilles Fauconnier, Teenie Matlock, Adele Goldberg, Bill Croft and Mike Tomasello. The sheer “rock star” status of most of the faculty was slightly overwhelming at first – after all, you were suddenly taught by the very person whose books you adore – but thanks to the very relaxed, informal and generally low-key approach the faculty employed, we students soon found ourselves engaged in lively discussions about all those things that make linguists tick. Why, oh why, do so many still follow Chomskyan linguistics? Where does language come from? How is language represented in the mind and brain? And what makes a verb a verb? These discussions were not limited to the classroom, but extended over lunch breaks, evening receptions, social programmes and even party nights. Being exposed to four weeks of non-stop linguistic talk naturally made my brain go wild with ideas for my project, and led to me learning a lot about the field in general. But Berkeley’s classrooms and lecture theatres was where most of the magic happened.  Listening to heated discussions between the leading scholars in the field was a true eye-opener, finding out about the latest developments straight from the horse’s mouth constituted an overwhelming inspiration and, most importantly, being able to discuss your own project with the faculty was a true mind-blower. All faculty were very approachable, offering office hours in Berkeley’s lovely cafes and bars (the latter being dubbed “Happy Office Hour”). So it was that over a couple of semi-skimmed cinnamon lattes, my PhD project took a slightly different turn than originally anticipated. Thanks to suggestions from Mark Tuner, Gilles Fauconnier and Eve Sweetser, three of the leading developers and proponents of Conceptual Integration Theory, my PhD will now concentrate on the cognitive mechanisms that work behind creative language use in interaction, thus ensuring a truly innovative project. For all these reasons, attending the Linguistic Institute and researching at Berkeley had a major impact not only on my PhD project, but also on my general take on and identification with my chosen field of research, linguistics. I would like to express my profoundest gratitude to GCSC for contributing so generously to the funding of my stay at Berkeley. Text und Fotos: Vera Stadelmann |
|
