Linguistics inaugural lecture

I’m not quite sure why I noticed, but I did. There was an inaugural lecture announced in the Staff Bulletin. (I suppose the inaugural lectures in SOS were also advertised there.) The email with the link to the bulletin didn’t even mention which school the speaker, Marco Tamburelli, was in. But I must have looked, as otherwise I would not have known that he was a linguist, and that his lecture would be about linguistic diversity. It sounded good! I signed up. 

When everyone was seated and he had been introduced, the fresh professor started with discussing the linguistic diversity in the UK. It's bigger than I realised! And then he gave another example, from Italy, not only because, he said, he was from… a region that was currently under Italian administration, but also because it just was quite linguistically diverse. The audience assumed one of the minority languages he mentioned was his own.

He also spoke of what historically happened with languages. He said that in empires, languages generally were not under threat, because as long as you paid your tax, the authorities didn't care what language you spoke. They might want you to speak a unifying language, such as Latin in the Roman Empire, but they were not trying to make you stop speaking any other languages you might use. He said things were different in nation states, and said that when Italy was unified in more or less the shape we know it now, there was a campaign of making everyone speak what we now call Italian and nothing else. 

He also spoke of the various levels as to which people appreciate majority and minority languages. If a minority language is rated as of lower value or lower beauty, it will be under threat, as people want the best for themselves and for their children.

He didn't get much beyond that. Before I knew what was happening, he stopped. I was a bit disappointed! I would have loved to hear more. But he needed to leave time for questions, and I figured we would be booted out after an hour sharp. And that happened. There was a fair number of questions, but at 7 pm the chair called it quits.

When I walked out I said hello to Peredur, who had showed up too. And then I left. I intended to go straight home. It was late enough! But to my disappointment, so did everybody else. There wasn't even a dispenser of tea! I know the University is struggling financially, but this seemed unnecessarily stingy. Oh well. I hope the new professor wasn't too disappointed. And I'll keep an eye on such announcements. I like occasionally sticking my nose in a discipline other than my own!