About / May08 / Cook-Gumperz presents lectures to International Pragmatics Association

May 27, 2008
For immediate release

Jenny Cook-Gumperz of UC Santa Barbara’s Gevirtz School presents lectures on linguistics and education to the International Pragmatics Association in Antwerp

Professor Jenny Cook-Gumperz of UC Santa Barbara’s The Gevirtz School has taken part in several events at the Pragmatics Research Center in Antwerp, Belgium this spring at the invitation of the Center’s Director, Professor Jef Verschueren. Along with her husband John J. Gumperz of University of California, Berkeley she presented two lectures “Linguistic anthropology and discourse level understanding: The case of German spelling reform” and “The discourse of educational assessment.”

The Pragmatics Research Center is part of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA), an international scientific organization devoted to the study of language use. Established in 1986, it now has over 1,200 members in over 60 countries world-wide. It is listed in The World of Learning, and it is a recognized member of the Consortium of Affiliates for International Programs of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Jenny Cook-Gumperz has been a member of the Department of Education since 1991. She teaches courses in sociological theories and cultural studies of education, sociolinguistics and literacy, discourse and narrative analysis as well as other methods of qualitative analysis. Cook-Gumperz’s research over the past decade concentrates on two main areas: linguistic ideology and its role in cultural practices, and socialization in different contexts and across the life span. Methodologically she continues to focus on detailed sociolinguistic analysis within a broader framework of sociological explanation. Her work looks at discourse both as speaking practices, and as cultural texts that reveal the workings of social organizational life. Both areas have in common a concern with education in its broadest sense, sometimes through looking at discourse in classrooms and in schooling, and other times at discourse as it reveals socialization processes in other institutional settings. Among her many publication is the book The Social Construction of Literacy, which in addition to its publication in English, has been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, and Greek.

[Jenny Cook-Gumperz is available for interviews; contact George Yatchisin at 805 893 5789]
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Jenny Cook-Gumperz of UC Santa Barbara’s Gevirtz School presents lectures on linguistics and education to the International Pragmatics Association in Antwerp