Sociolinguistics talk at GMU

Dr. Virginia Zavala, Associate Professor of the Linguistics Program at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, will present the talk “Racialization of the bilingual student in higher education: A case from the Peruvian Andes”. The event is going to take place on Monday, October 18, 2010, at 4:30 p.m. in SUB II, Room 5, at George Mason University (GMU). The activity, sponsored by the Department of Modern & Classical Languages and the Latin American Studies Program of GMU, is open to the public.
This talk analyzes how a specific type of pronunciation in the Peruvian Quechua-speaking context has been racialized and serves to legitimize discrimination toward students from rural areas. In turn, this discrimination leads to low academic performance and a university experience that is often traumatic. For more details about this talk, you can write to the following email: jleeman@gmu.edu.