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- IN PERSON How Language Works
IN PERSON How Language Works
Two Saturdays | May 25 & June 1, 2024 | 10-3pm
Instructor: Julie Sedivy
MEMBER PRICE $150.00 (with member coupon AWCSM25)
NON-MEMBER PRICE: $200.00
When visual artists or musicians train in their craft, they often learn about the science of visual or auditory perception. But discussions of writing as a craft rarely lean on the rich science of language as it lives in the human mind. In this course, you will learn some basic properties about the psychology of language. Topics include: how we internalize sound patterns, how we unfold sentences in time and why some sentences cause more mental strain than others, how we keep track of backgrounded and foregrounded information, and how we read between the lines of what is said or written. This course will sharpen your observations about language and provide some guidance for how to incorporate this knowledge into your writing practice.
This class takes place in person at the Alexandra Writers Centre Society.
Julie Sedivy is a writer and linguist whose love of language extends to many literary genres and whose work often intertwines aesthetic and scientific perspectives. Her publications include three books of nonfiction, a children’s picture book (co-authored with Souad Shehab), a non-boring textbook on the psychology of language, and an edited volume of personal essays (co-edited with Rona Altrows). She was a finalist for the W.O. Mitchell City of Calgary Book Prize and the Eggleston Award for Nonfiction for her book Memory Speaks: On Losing and Reclaiming Language and Self and was the 2020 winner of the Jon Whyte Memorial Essay Award. She has published dozens of essays and articles in outlets such as Nautilus, The Literary Review of Canada, Scientific American, Discover, Politico, as well as in various anthologies. She occasionally writes and performs poetry as well. She is preparing to launch her genre-pushing memoir Linguaphile: A Life of Language Love in October 2024, and has two more books in the incubation stage. She loves to teach almost as much as she loves to read and write.