Screening

About The Linguists

Year Released:

2008

Genres:

Documentary

Metadata:

Directed by Seth Kramer, Jeremy Newberger, Daniel A. Miller

The Linguists is an engaging and unpredictable film on the subject of language diversity and endangered languages. It follows two scientists as they race around the world to document languages on the verge of extinction, in places such as Siberia, India, and Bolivia. By turns funny, suspenseful, and moving, and with a vibrant soundtrack, it conveys both the value of human cultural diversity and the urgency of attempts to enable the survival of traditional cultures. In English, Spanish, and Russian with English subtitles. (HD Presentation)

Associate Professor David Stronger holds an undergraduate degree in Hispanic Studies from the University of Manchester, where he specialized in Latin American literature. During this time, he spent a year studying anthropology at the University of Quindío, Colombia, and at PUC in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He taught English as a Foreign Language in Valencia, Spain; Verona, Italy; and Nara, Japan, before pursuing graduate studies in linguistics at the University of Durham. He spent another four years in Japan teaching linguistics and English language at Mie University. In 2006, he joined the Department of Second Language Studies at Indiana University and was promoted to tenure in 2012. Stringer's main research area is the acquisition of syntax and lexical semantics with a particular interest in universal aspects of word meaning that play a role in grammar across languages. Other areas of research interest include World Englishes (especially in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa), language attrition (in joint work with Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig), and biocultural diversity (linking language revitalization in indigenous cultures to the conservation of ecosystems).