Faculty Spotlight Event. Blind Rage, Blind Copies and Blind Dates: A Cross-Linguistic Analysis of Ableist Collocations

Join us for a Faculty Spotlight presentation. Blind Rage, Blind Copies and Blind Dates: A Cross-Linguistic Analysis of Ableist Collocations will be held on March 8, 2019 in East Hall 206.

There is an interesting, and fiercely complex, half-conscious, tangle of connection between language, thought, culture and discrimination. To eliminate discrimination, we begin by examining that tangle. Our work examines derogatory metaphors involving blindness such as "Blind copy", "Blind luck" and "blind rage" in which "blind" means ignorant, random or extreme, and trace their distribution across 20 languages. As this presentation is our initial set of results, we will introduce the topic, explain its relevance to disability studies, linguistics and activism, and then present 3 language case studies: Tamil, Asante Twi and Yoroba. We will conclude with a brief discussion of allyship in the context of speech.

Faculty members who have worked on the project include:
Kimberly Spallinger
Lucinda Hunter
Sheri Wells-Jensen
Ana Kryzhanivska

Graduate students who have worked on the project include:
Shahin Hossain
Neeru Nagarajan
Michael Oshindoro
Stephen Ohene-Larbi