Language Pod at COSI awarded Engagement Impact Grant
Posted onApril 26, 2013
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‘The Science of Language: Using Language Sciences to Promote Science Education at COSI’ (PI Shari Speer) has been awarded a 2013 Engagement Impact Grant in the amount of $60,000. The College of Arts and Sciences will contribute an additional $30,000. The project has four goals: (1) to conduct research in the language sciences, (2) to educate the public about how human language works and about the scientific process more generally, (3) to encourage OSU students to participate in research programs and consider careers in science education, and (4) to inspire future scientists –perhaps even future scientists of language.
Locating Language at OSU
Posted onApril 20, 2013
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Locating Language: A Symposium on the Linguistics of Place is being hosted by OSU’s Department of Linguistics (with support from the BLN), April 20-21, in the Round Meeting Room, Ohio Union. The symposium explores the relationship between language, place, and identity. While region or geography is sometimes taken for granted in linguistic work, recent research has highlighted the complexity of the ways in which speakers use language to orient towards place, demonstrating that linguistic practice does not merely reflect place, but also constructs it. The plenary speakers are Barbara Johnstone (Carnegie Mellon University), Galey Modan (OSU), and Lauren Hall-Lew (University of Edinburg).
Keynote at OSU Mansfield Diversity Conference
Posted onApril 13, 2013
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On Saturday, April 13, 2013, The Ohio State University at Mansfield and the Office of Multicultural Affairs hosts its one-day conference “Empowering and Engaging Diverse Perspectives: A P-16 Approach” to encourage discussion and critical thinking on issues of diversity and inclusion in the P-16 educational pipeline. The morning keynote speaker is Dr. Bob Moses, founder of the Algebra Project. I am the afternoon keynote speaker, and my talk is ‘Expanding repertoires of practice: Educational experiences of children in the Somali Diaspora’.
Language Pod Course featured by Digital First
Posted onMarch 1, 2013
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Digital First has done a feature on the Buckeye Language Network’s Language Pod at COSI and the Language Pod Course (aka EDUTL/LING/PSYC 5700 Training in Informal Science Outreach). The feature focuses on our use of iPads to engage COSI visitors with linguistic research in hands-on ways that get them thinking about how language works and how our brains process language.
Bil Labov & Gillian Sankoff at OSU
Posted onFebruary 28, 2013
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Bill Labov and Gillian Sankoff are visiting OSU February 28 through March 1. Among the many scheduled events, I am most excited about their talk on Friday, “What is to be learned?”, in which they will endeavor to answer the question: What are the data that the child attends to in the process of becoming a native speaker? The talk will be in Lazenby 21, 3:55-5:00 pm, reception to follow.
Nathaniel Dumas speaking at OSU on American Stuttering English
Posted onFebruary 19, 2013
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Dr. Nathaniel W. Dumas (Linguistics, UC Santa Barbara) comes to OSU at the end of February to give a public talk and to guest lectures in my Ethnography of Communication seminar and a seminar taught by Professor Maurice Stevens (Comparative Studies). Dr. Dumas’ talk is titled “This Guy Says I Should Talk Like That All the Time”: Subverting Competing Masculinities and Femininities in an American Stuttering English Comedienne’s Stand-Up Routine. While American Stuttering English (ASE) speakers have historically had a tense relationship with comedic representations of their speech, they have recently reinterpreted its comedic portrayals using stand-up comedy as a means of intervention. In his talk, Dr. Dumas analyzes how Rona B, an ASE comedienne, subverts mainstream ideologies of language and gender through her comedic performances. The talk is Wednesday, February 27th, 3:30-5:30pm, University Hall, Room 347. Reception to follow. This event is sponsored by the Buckeye Language Network, Disability Studies, Diversity & Identity Studies Collective, and the Department of Comparative Studies, and the Department of Teaching and Learning Equity and Diversity Committee.
Work-in-progress session at NCTEAR 2013
Posted onFebruary 14, 2013
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OSU hosts NCTEAR this year. My Second Language and Literacy Lab (SL3) group have a work-in-progress session on Saturday, February 16, 1:45-3:15 in Arps 100. In our session, ‘Multiple Perspectives on Talk around Storybook Read-alouds in a Kindergarten Classroom’, we discuss our collaborative work on 23 read alouds 
recorded in a Kindergarten classroom in a charter school that serves primarily the children of Somali refugees who have resettled in Central Ohio. Sirad Shirdon, Se Jeong Yang, Tanti Sari, and Ani Pujiastuti will present their analyses, each having taken a different analytic approach to the read aloud data. We will then discuss our efforts to integrate these different insights into read alouds as key sites for constructing meaning and developing cultural/linguistic minority children’s familiarity and facility with English language and literacy practices.
OSU minor in Somali language & culture
Posted onDecember 2, 2012
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OSU offers an undergraduate minor in Somali language and culture. For more information about the Somali language program at OSU, please contact Jibril Mohamed or Mohammed Omer at (614)292-0758 or by e-mail at Mohamed.196@osu.edu.
Somali heritage language classes in Minneapolis public school
Posted onDecember 2, 2012
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A high school in the Minneapolis public school system has begun offering Somali heritage language classes, likely the first public school in the U.S. to do so. At South High School, where the Somali classes are offered, nearly 60 students are registered in two class periods, one that focuses on Somali language and another on culture. Check out the story on CBS and Hiraan.
Language Pod featured in the Dispatch
Posted onNovember 25, 2012
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Research being conducted by Dr. Kathryn Campbell-Kibler in the BLN’s Language Pod at COSI was featured in the Columbus Dispatch. The online version of the story features a link to sound files you can click on to hear examples of the major dialects spoken in Ohio: midland in central Ohio, south in southern Ohio, and inland north in northern Ohio. The Pod is also on Facebook.