MacKay Lecture Series explores the benefits of multilingualism

With immigration and international student enrolment on the rise and world travel and business attracting more consumers, communities across the globe are becoming more diverse and complex. As a result, multilingualism has assumed greater importance both in practice and in critical scholarly engagement.

These trends helped inspire the central theme for the 2015 MacKay Lecture Series, Multilingualism Matters – Beyond Babel, which was organized by Krista Kesselring, a professor of History at Dalhousie and the associate dean, academic for the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.

"Dalhousie’s language departments are trying more actively to promote the benefits of multilingualism to individuals and to the communities in which we live," Dr. Kesselring wrote in her proposal for this theme. "Meanwhile, we also hope to engage critically and analytically with the discussions surrounding multilingualism. Why are so many people so resistant to learning new languages? Who wins and who loses when multilingualism is promoted, or when it is obstructed?"

Each year, the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences hosts the lecture series, which features four talks throughout the academic year by internationally renowned speakers. Three of the lectures revolve around a central common interdisciplinary theme chosen each year by the faculty’s Research Development Committee from a selection of faculty proposals, while the fourth focuses on a broader historical theme.

The way of the future

Christopher Elson, chair of Dalhousie’s French department, supports the theme of this year’s lecture series and promotes the value of learning more than one language.

"Multilingualism is the way of future understanding among peoples, cultures and countries and is the clear alternative to Global English as a mere vehicle of communication," said Dr. Elson. "Canadians, with our bilingual inheritance and multicultural society, are well placed to take advantage of this challenge. Leaders of tomorrow in all fields should have two, three or four languages." 

Patricia Lamarre, a professor in the Faculty of Educational Sciences at the University of Montreal (pictured right), will be kicking off the series this year with a lecture on the linguistic trajectories of young multilingual Montrealers. Dr. Lamarre, who is also director of the Languages, Identities and Intergroup relations group with the Montreal-based Centre for Ethnic Studies (an inter-university research centre), speaks on Thursday, Sept. 24 at 7 p.m. in room 105 of the Weldon Law Building.

"In a world that is moving faster and faster, and where people in great numbers are moving across frontiers of different sorts (including virtual ones), it makes sense to think about multilingualism and what it means to people in the 21st century and how it impacts how they live their lives, imagine their identities and have access to social and economic mobility," said Dr. Lamarre, reflecting on the theme of this year’s lecture series.

Next up on Oct. 22 is Sherry Simon, a professor of French from Concordia University, with a lecture on how language exchange shapes urban culture. She’ll be followed on Oct. 27 by Dr. Monica Heller, a professor of Anthropology at the University of Toronto and a researcher with the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, who will speak about multilingualism in a globalized economy.

Rounding things off on Nov. 5 is Marcia Chatelain, an associate professor of history and African-American Studies at Georgetown University, with a MacKay History Lecture entitled "Teaching in the Age of #BlackLivesMatter: Social Media, Social Justice, and Social Change in Classrooms and Communities."

For full details, please visit the MacKay Lecture Series website.