This talk by award-winning VIU professor Dr. Yoichi Mukai (Modern Languages Studies) will introduce two of VIU's linguistic initiatives: The Linguistic Research Lab, and the “Linguistics of the Day'' activities in our linguistics courses. The research lab is intended to serve as an interdisciplinary research hub. To introduce the capabilities of our new eye-tracking equipment, Yoichi will present a series of completed and planned eye-tracking studies, encompassing topics such as the influence of literacy skills on spoken language, the interaction of words in bilingual minds, and factors that impact cognitive effort when speaking or understanding a second language. The demonstration for “Linguistics of the Day” will include a mini experiment and an analysis of real-world language examples, aiming to raise awareness of the often-overlooked complexity of and assumptions about how we use language. These demonstrations illustrate how linguistics can transform intuitions of language into explicit meta-linguistic awareness.
