For faculty with a 9-month appointment, summers are for research and for recharging. I just returned from a trip where I combined both. I learned so much at the 8th International Conference on Prescriptivism in Brussels in June, for example about “Sprachkultur” in Lithuania, where students’ ability to read and write in Lithuanian seems to be declining, based on test results, but where what has changed is really the culture of error hunting in a post-totalitarian society adhering to the squishy (and non-scientific) concept of “Sprachkultur” (language culture). My own talk focused on the interactive turn in linguistic advice giving — away from usage guides and dictionaries and towards interactive, often anonymous discussions on the internet, driven by the interests of the question asker. Will those discussions be replaced by ‘consulting’ an AI bot — so much more convenient, but also not a true interlocutor?
I also got to spend time with family and friends in Germany and Italy, in the beautiful Cinque Terre area. And now it’s time for writing, revising, reviewing and mapping out the next academic year, in which I’ll assume an administrative role again.
