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Research Seminar with Rada Tirvassen, Associate Professor, University of Pretoria

Come along to our research seminar: The Metanarrative Behind Multilingualism on Friday 22 January

All welcome. To register your attendance please CLICK HERE

The Education Research Centre and School of Education present:

Rada Tirvassen, Associate Professor, University of Pretoria

The metanarrative behind multilingualism

Friday 22nd January, 2015, 1pm, B406, Checkland Building, Falmer

 While sociolinguistics is defined as the study of socially patterned language practice and attitudes towards languages, one can legitimately ask whether knowledge provided to the wider society stems from the empirical observations of the researcher or from her/his metanarrative which is rooted in certain trends in academic work. A meta-analysis of mainstream sociolinguistic scholarship on multilingualism in the islands of the Indian Ocean has revealed that the interpretation of the linguistic and social phenomena has been undertaken with critical constructs tainted with Western ideological values. The presentation will end with a reflection on the implications of a shift from the metanarrative of the researcher to the experiences of the ‘ordinary’ citizen.

Rada Tirvassen is Associate Professor and Head of Department of the Department of Modern European Languages at the University of Pretoria. His research interests lie in the area of language and education, ranging from language policy to language acquisition issues in the Indian Ocean. Recent publications include Créolisation, plurilinguismes et dynamiques sociales (2014) (=Creolisation, multilingualism and social dynamics) and, L’entrée dans le bilinguisme (2012) (=The first steps towards bilingualism), which are based on research carried out in Mauritius and in the other islands of the Indian Ocean.