‘Sticking up for Slang’ special lecture at Mount Mercy May 2

Mount Mercy University will welcome linguist expert Anne Curzan for a special keynote address during the Scholarship Festival on May 2. Her lecture, “Sticking up for Slang: A Career Studying Language” will take place at 4 p.m. in Flaherty Community Room, Basile Hall and is free and open to the public; seating may be limited.

Should "LOL" and "muffin top" be in dictionaries? Why do we pronounce “colonel” with an "r"? Why do younger speakers use "like" so much?

Dr. Curzan will talk about the systematic and quirky ways that language changes, explain how and why slang turns language on its head sometimes, and show how fun (and surprising) the English language can be. Dr. Curzan is an associate professor in the Department of English at the University of Michigan. She also has faculty appointments in the Department of Linguistics and the School of Education, and currently serves as director of the English Department Writing Program and co-director of the Joint Ph.D. Program in English and Education.

Curzan's address is the culminating event during Mount Mercy's Pathways to Scholarship Festival, which will showcase a rich array of academic achievement, faculty-student research partnerships and interactive demonstrations. Events will be held throughout the day on May 2, 10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m., in Betty Cherry Heritage Hall and the University Center Commons.

The Scholarship Festival will showcase diverse student projects, representing a variety of academic subjects which are chosen from outstanding senior theses, capstone experiences, honors projects, and independent research projects. Disciplines include history, mathematics, computer science, biology, film studies and chemistry. A few titles of presentations include: “Mutants, Clones and Earthworms,” “Fractals, Cryptography and Clusters,” and “Humor and Human Life.”

For the complete schedule of the Scholarship festival, please visit www.mtmercy.edu/fest-info.

To view Curzan's “The Word on Language” video clips, visit: www.lsa.umich.edu/alumni/wire