Book Talk: Mother Tongue Tied: On Language, Motherhood & Multilingualism by Malwina Gudowska in conversation with Louise Rolland
When:
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Venue:
TBC
Please join us to discuss Mother Tongue Tied: On Language, Motherhood & Multilingualism - Disrupting Myths & Finding Meaning, newly released in paperback. Author Malwina Gudowska will be in conversation with Dr Louise Rolland to discuss her book and shed light on the ways in which we navigate language, its power to shape and reshape lives, and the ripple effects felt far beyond any one home or any one language.
About Mother Tongue Tied:
It is estimated that more than half of the world’s population communicates in more than one language and over a third of the population in the United Kingdom is multilingual. And yet, myths and misconceptions around raising multilingual children prevail and the pressure to keep heritage languages alive has become a private conflict for millions. Linguistic diversity is more prevalent than ever, but so is linguistic inequality. It takes one generation for a family language to be lost. One generation – like mother to child. Mother Tongue Tied explores the emotional weight of raising multilingual children while grappling with your own identity and notions of home. At what cost does a mother save a language? Or does she let it slip away and, with it, a part of herself her children may never know?
This is an interactive event and audience members will have the opportunity to ask questions and are encouraged to share their own experiences.
Malwina Gudowska is a Polish Canadian writer, editor and linguist living in London, UK and the author of Mother Tongue Tied: On Language, Motherhood & Multilingualism – Disrupting Myths & Finding Meaning (Footnote Press, 2024). A National Magazine Award winner, her writing has appeared in Vogue, Financial Times, Literary Hub, ELLE, The Globe and Mail and in several anthologies. Her article on raising multilingual children won a National Magazine Award and was included in “The Best Canadian Magazine Articles” anthology. She also writes the award-winning newsletter Motherlingual on multilingualism and motherhood. Gudowska has a MA in Linguistics from UCL and is currently working on a PhD in applied linguistics at Birkbeck, University of London exploring the emotions and experiences of mothers raising multilingual children.
Dr Louise Rolland is an Honorary Research Fellow at Birkbeck and Visiting Fellow at the University of Essex. She obtained her PhD in applied linguistics at Birkbeck, exploring language practices in psychotherapy from the perspective of multilingual clients. She is interested in the relationship between language and emotions, memory and identity, as well as issues of linguistic in/exclusion, particularly in mental healthcare, research and children's literature. Her interdisciplinary work has been published in both applied linguistics and psychotherapy journals and handbooks.
Contact name: Bojana Petric
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