Kelly Wright

Kelly Wright will speak at the UC San Diego Linguistics Department on Monday, May 11, at 2:00 pm in AP&M 4301.

Choose Your Words Carefully 

Experimental sociolinguist & lexicographer Dr. Kelly Elizabeth Wright will demonstrate users are aware of the direct indexation of the majority of their daily linguistic choices to potent & omnipresent Standard language ideologies. Such awareness makes all language use relevant for success across linguistic markets and often marks non-normative identity performance as unintelligent, crude, or even criminal. Wright will invite consideration of what a general preferencefor so-called appropriate linguistic production portends for the futureof free speech and for the future of linguistic scholarship. She will challenge the audience to encounter their own motivations for self-censorship as echoes of the Standard language ideologies which threaten social mobility for most language users, and to use that self-reflexive space to imagine more inclusive futures for all the communities they inhabit.