Top Linguist to lecture at Vic

6 September 2006

Top Linguist to lecture at Vic

The stories of English, Language Death and The Future of Language are the lectures to be presented by one of the world's leading commentators on language when he visits New Zealand later this month.

Professor David Crystal will be visiting New Zealand, from the UK, as the inaugural Ian Gordon Fellow in Linguistics at Victoria University of Wellington.

With over 100 books published Crystal has also been a consultant, contributor, and presenter on several radio and television programmes and series, including numerous BBC programmes since the 1980s.

He is currently patron of the International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language (IATEFL), president of the UK National Literacy Association, and an honorary vice-president of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists, the Institute of Linguists and the Society for Editors and Proofreaders.

Associate Professor David Crabbe, from Victoria University, has been instrumental in arranging Professor Crystal’s visit to New Zealand, and in setting up the Ian Gordon Fellowship.

“It will be great to have Professor Crystal at Victoria. I’m pleased to have the opportunity of arranging this visit, thanks to the generosity of the late Ian Gordon. I hope that students and members of the public take up the opportunity to attend the presentations and to learn from one of the top linguists in the world.”

About the Ian Gordon Fellowship

This fellowship was established in the final years of Emeritus Professor Ian Gordon’s life when he donated half a million dollars to the Victoria University Foundation to support his life-long passion for the study of language and his loyalty to Victoria University.

Well known as I.A. Gordon, he had his own radio show on National Radio and wrote a popular column on language in the New Zealand Listener. He also wrote 20 books, including A Word in Your Ear and Take My Word for It. He was an authority on the writings of Katherine Mansfield and Scottish novelist John Galt.

ENDS

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