Written by Cristina M. Rivera-Garcia
The Coffee and Sociolinguistics virtual reading group will be holding its first meeting tomorrow, September 17th at 10:30 AM. Below you can find the flyer and the information to access it:
Description
The Coffee and Sociolinguistics Virtual Reading Group, a community of students and scholars interested in discussing the latest in sociolinguistics research, will have its first meeting tomorrow, September 17 at 10:30 AM to discuss “Being Real on Fake Instagram: Likes, Images, and Media Ideologies of Value” by Scott Ross of George Washington University.
The first meeting will discuss Ross’ (2019) article and its contemporary relevance to a world heavily reliant on social media interactions and identity performances. The article explores how young women construct “realness” and “fakeness” through strategic use of language and other semiotic tools (images, captions, etc.) to appeal to diverse audiences on social media platforms. It is open to anyone interested in linguistics—affiliation to the University of Puerto Rico is not required. To join the discussion, use this Zoom link to join the call at the scheduled time; the password for the first meeting is colegio. A copy of the article under discussion is available on ResearchGate, found here.
According to the Coffee and Linguistics Facebook page, the group is “an online effort to preserve a sense of collective ‘academic solidarity.” The discussions are led by Dr. Katherine Morales, an Adjunct Professor of English Linguistics at the University of Puerto Rico—Mayagüez, who got the idea from her time as a graduate student in at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, where similar reading groups effectively in brought students and scholars together to critically discuss issues of language in society.
Coffee and Linguistics will host reading groups once a month. For more information, email katherine.morales1@upr.edu.
