Language Science Lunch Talk - Julie Sedivy, Author of Linguaphile
Language Science Lunch Talk - Julie Sedivy, Author of Linguaphile
Dispatches from the literary world: On the role of subjective experience in doing and communicating science.
Abstract: As any language scientist knows, only a small portion of our cognitive processes is readily available for conscious introspection, limiting the scientific value of subjective experience. Nonetheless, drawing on my perspective as psycholinguist-turned-writer, I make a case for scientists according a significant role to subjective experience rather than sidelining it. Not all self-reports are of equal quality. I consider how literary writers (of both fiction and memoir) develop a discipline of rendering felt experience with precision and skepticism, and how similar habits of mind could be useful to scientists, contributing to creative and nuanced scientific work. I discuss how making room for subjective experience is a critical part of communicating science to the public in a way that promotes trust, and how scientists, rather than supplanting people’s experiences with empirical data, can strive to make people better experts of their own experiences. Finally, I suggest that maintaining a vibrant connection to their own experiences of doing science might help scientists build psychological resilience under the stresses of the current environment.
Bio: Julie Sedivy is a Calgary-based writer and language scientist whose work ranges from the scientific to the literary, and includes everything in between. She received her PhD in linguistics at the University of Rochester, and has conducted pioneering scientific work related to how people produce, understand, and learn language. She has taught linguistics and psychology at Brown University and the University of Calgary, and has published a textbook (Language in Mind) on the rapidly growing field of psycholinguistics. She also writes for nonacademic audiences about language, how it sets up camp in the human mind, and how it plays out in human interactions and in society at large. Her latest book is Linguaphile: A Life of Language Love (publication date: Oct. 2024), a blend of scientific exploration and lyrical memoir. You can read her bio here, check out her books, read some of her essays, hear some of her talks, or follow her on X (Twitter). She is a citizen of three countries.