A New Public Idea about Multilingualism:

On February 24, 2020, the Language Research Centre brought Dr. David Gramling (Associate Professor of German Studies, University of Arizona) to Calgary to discuss how the discourse about multilingualism has changed in recent decades and where we should steer it in the future. His visit consisted of two main events. The first event was a lunch-hour seminar for faculty members and graduate students. The discussion was based on a chapter from Gramling’s monograph The Invention of Monolingualism (Bloomsbury, 2016). Graduate students Anna Pletnyova and Brett Nelson acted as respondents.

The second event that same day was a lecture for the wider Calgary community. Dr. Gramling’s talk "A New Public Idea about Multilingualism” was followed by remarks from Eve Moreau, a learning specialist for language programs in the Calgary Board of Education.