Jim McCloskey, Professor and Chair of the Department of Linguistics, University of California, Santa Cruz
“Sex and the Irish Language: The Cultural Politics of Language Attrition.”
Thu Apr 8, 7:30pm, KCB 101
(sponsored by The James Geddes, Jr. Lecture Series)
A belief frequently expressed about the Irish language is that ‘there are no words for sex in Irish’. This talk considers the veracity of this strange belief, tries to uncover its origins, and uses that exploration as a probe to better understand the mechanisms of language destruction.