Learning to think in a foreign language: Evidence from motion event cognition
Welcome to this seminar, which is a collaboration between the Higher Seminar in Educational Sciences and the Diversity Group of the SLUM Seminar Series. This time we will listen to a presentation by Panos Athanasopoulos, Professor of English at Lund University, which aims to examine empirical evidence from L2 users within the linguistic relativity framework.
Abstract
Since the 1970s, foreign language education has undergone a cultural turn (e.g., Byram, 1989; Byrnes, 2002; Deardorff, 2009), according to which language teaching should take into consideration how “people of different languages—including language learners themselves—think and act” (Byram et al., 2013, p. 251). This resonates with the linguistic relativity hypothesis, which holds that language affects how we perceive the world, in predictable ways (Whorf, 1956; Athanasopoulos et al., 2026). The aim of this talk is to examine empirical evidence from L2 users within the linguistic relativity framework, probing the extent to which cognitive patterns may change as a result of additional language learning. The empirical focus will be motion event cognition, and I will draw on data from L2 users with different bilingual profiles, including foreign language learners and functional multilinguals.
Welcome everyone!
Host
The Diversity Group of the SLUM Seminar Series, at Department of Languages, Literatures and Learning, in collaboration with the Higher Seminar in Educational Sciences
