Linguistics and Language Myths

Is it true that Greek gets worse over time? That there are “good” and “bad languages? That some languages are more complex than others? That linguists are supposed to tell speakers what is “good or bad” use of their language or that linguistic borrowing harms languages? The speaker will address all these questions and will tell us what does linguistics, the science of language, say about all this.

George J. Xydopoulos (BA Hons, Athens; MA & PhD, London) is Professor of Linguistics at the Department of Philology of the University of Patras in Greece. His current research and teaching interests fall within the areas of lexicology (lexical morphosemantics, special and subcultural vocabularies), lexical semantics, lexicography and educational linguistics. His publications include research articles in journals and collective volumes and he is the author of the textbook Lexicology: an introduction to the analysis of the word and the lexicon (Patakis Publishers, 2008). He has co-authored and edited textbooks in educational linguistics, has adapted English general linguistics textbooks to Greek and has compiled linguistics termbases and e-dictionaries.

A series of online talks in English, organised by The Hellenic Centre and Εργαστήριο Ελληνικής Γλώσσας και Πολιτισμού (Greek Language & Culture Lab, University of Patras).

See all the other lectures in this series here.