Meet the linguists

The UCT co-hosted International Congress of Linguists will meet for the first time on African soil from 2 to 6 July at the Cape Town International Convention Centre (CTICC).

This, the 20th iteration of the congress, titled The Dynamics of Language, will showcase current developments in linguistics. While topics and speakers are selected from an international pool, the congress seeks to highlight African language research, and areas of research pertinent to the continent.

The congress culminates in an event, titled Meet the Linguists, where media and members of the public are invited to engage with some of the main speakers on the programme.

“While linguistics is a technical field, it interfaces in its more applied manifestations with matters concerning the public, eg in matters of multilingualism, diversity, language endangerment, language politics, new electronic media, Sign Language, cognition etc,” explained UCT Professor Rajend Mesthrie, president of the congress, and holder of the South African Research Chairs Initiative (SARChI) Chair in Migration, Language and Social Change.

Meet the Linguists takes place at the CTICC at the Roof-Terrace Room and Balcony from 18:00 to 19:00 on 5 July.