William A. Douglass Chair: Itsaso Rodriguez

PhD Itsaso Rodriguez will be this year´s guest researcher for the William A. Douglas University of Massachusetts Amherst (Amherst, AEB), fostered by the Etxepare Basque Institute.

Lecture: ‘New speakers’ of Basque: Language Contact and Social Meaning

Tues. Oct. 24, 5 pm.

Herter Hall 301

“New speakers” of minoritized languages and how they understand their identity have become an important subject of research in the Basque Country and other minority language regions.  In this lecture Dr. Rodriguez-Ordóñez will present her research among new Basque speaking in Spain, examining how particular grammatical elements of Spanish and Basque are being used and the social meanings that speakers give them.  Through her case study, she will argue that research on new speakers’ sociolinguistic realities and practices have much to contribute to the larger field of contact linguistics by revealing the nature of contact phenomena to be the interplay of cognitive, social, and ideological factors.

Introduction by Jacqueline Urla, Dean of the Graduate School , Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Douglass Chair.

This event is sponsored by the Etxepare Institute of the Basque Ministry of Culture, with assistance from the Modern European Studies Program and the Program in Spanish and Portuguese.