For someone with a speech disability, what does it mean to have a voice? In our final episode, we pose the question to two families: one with a husband losing his ability to talk, and another with a disabled son on the cusp of adulthood. Each is looking to technology to help them literally be heard with their own unique voices. At the same time, they remind us that to be human is to be so much more than the sounds we make.
In this episode, we break format to have a conversation about accent, language, and identity with special guest and recurring contributor Katherine Kinzler from the University of Chicago. We talk about the challenges of overcoming bias, share listeners’ experiences (as well as our own), and reflect on the series so far.
Imagine teaching a language you’re still learning. Or raising your kids to speak it when you’re not yet fluent. For communities trying to revive their Indigenous languages, these are daily challenges – and at stake are both the history and future of their culture. In this episode, we meet educators and parents fighting to give their children their ancestral language, Lingít (Tlingit). What does it take to save a language?
Austin – Speaker Nancy Pelosi joined Congressman Lloyd Doggett for a press event on the 12th anniversary of the signing of the Affordable Care Act, at the Clinical Education Center at Brackenridge. Below are the Speaker’s remarks: Speaker Pelosi. Thank you – thank you very much, Lloyd Doggett, for your very generous words of introduction, for the invitation to be here.
Language has power. This was a hard-earned lesson for Vivian Nixon and Elaine Richardson, two women who were told all their lives that their way of talking – talking Black – was something to be kept out of public and professional spaces. This episode follows their separate journeys to embrace the history, beauty, and breadth of Black English, and liberate long-buried parts of themselves in the process.