2005 Media Releases
Wednesday, 9 November 2005
Pioneer of ‘sociolinguistics’ visits La Trobe University
From the social implications of how countries with large immigrant populations like Australia and Britain teach English to diverse ethnic groups – to the reaction of American popular culture when confronted with the Beatles phenomenon in the 1960s ….
These are two examples of high-level linguistic research illuminating every-day concerns carried out by Peter Trudgill, a visiting scholar at La Trobe University’s Institute for Advanced Study.
Professor Trudgill, from the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, is an expert on English as an international language as well as other languages and dialects.
He has carried out detailed studies of the dialects of the British Isles and of American and New Zealand English. At La Trobe University he is working with specialists in the Research Centre for Linguistic Typology, on the main Melbourne campus at Bundoora.
He will deliver a public lecture at 11 am today, Wednesday 9 November 2005, at the John Scott Meeting House, dealing with the world-wide loss of linguistic complexity. As well as having lectured on five continents, Peter Trudgill's linguistic insights have been featured on radio programs in six countries and on television.
Particularly well-known for his research into standard and non-standard dialects of English and their implications for educational policies, he has published more than 30 books including the seminal work, 'Sociolinguistics', first released in 1974 and still read by most students in the field.
He has also published on 'sex, covert prestige, and linguistic change', work which, among other things, highlights that how people speak reflects how they are treated.
Professor Trudgill says from an educational point of view, ‘the position of Standard English as the dialect of English used in writing is unassailable’, stressing, however, that this has ‘nothing whatsoever to do with spelling or punctuation.’
‘As far as spoken Standard English is concerned, we could conclude that the teaching of Standard English to speakers of other dialects may be commendable – if for no other reason than the discrimination against non-standard dialect speakers in most English-speaking societies – and (may be) possible, which I am inclined to doubt.’
As well as having examined linguistic features of pop songs, he shared his problems in visiting his wife's homeland with a best-selling volume: Coping with America: a beginner's guide to the USA. Short-listed for the Thomas Cook travel book prize, it has been translated into French.
He has also studied the development of Modern Greek and Norwegian, endangered Albanian dialects in Greece, sociolinguistics in several regions of Europe, pidgin and creole languages, linguistic geography, and the diffusion of linguistic features in language contact.
For his ground-breaking contributions to the advancement of linguistic knowledge, Professor Peter Trudgill will be awarded an honorary doctorate by La Trobe University.
• After gaining his BA from Cambridge, and MA and PhD from Edinburgh, Professor Trudgill began his teaching career at the University of Reading where he was appointed professor when barely forty years of age. Since then he has held chairs at the Universities of Essex, Lausanne and Fribourg.
He has been elected Fellow of five prestigious academies — the British Academy, the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences of Letters, the Agder Academy of Sciences, and the Royal Gustavus Adolphus Academy for Swedish Folk Culture.
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For interviews or further information, please contact Siew-Peng Condon, tel: 03 9479 6400 or email: s.condon@latrobe.edu.au