Language as “Home”: Lived student stories from the L’IMAGE Project
In this session, Professor Ai Taniguchi will discuss findings from her Language, Identity, Multiculturalism and Global Empowerment (L’IMAGE) Project. She interviewed multilingual students at U of T to identify their needs as they find a sense of self in the university community. In this session, you will learn how students view language as their “home” and an anchor of their identities, especially when they have been displaced from their physical “home” or otherwise have a difficult relationship with it. You will also learn how comics can be a useful tool for amplifying the voices of the community, and how the public education of linguistics can help marginalized community members thrive as their full linguistic self. Prof. Taniguchi will end the session with thoughts on the next steps for the project, including recommendations for university practices and plans for extending the research into the local GTA community.
About the speaker
Ai Taniguchi is an Assistant Professor (Teaching Stream) of English Language Linguistics and Online Teaching in the Department of Language Studies at UTM. Her teaching expertise is in the public communication of linguistics. As a linguist and an artist, she works at the intersection of linguistics and the visual arts to identity and address crises that communities are facing surrounding language. In her Language, Identity, Multiculturalism and Global Empowerment (L’IMAGE) Project, she uses the medium of comics for the public education of linguistics.
