Sylvia Tiwon's Keynote Speech at the 2014 COTSEAL/SEASSI Conference

Here's the title of Dr. Sylvia Tiwon's keynote address at the COTSEAL Conference at UW-Madison, July 18-19, and her description of it.

Gazing into the Dragon's Mouth: the Precarity of Language Work

The title is a reference to an episode in the classical Malay work, the Hikayat Hang Tuah (Story of Hang Tuah).  Hang Tuah is considered by many the culture hero par excellence.  Although invoked mainly for his courage and loyalty, I argue that his is a story of negotiating the linguistically diverse world circa the 16^th-17th centuries: as an emissary from both the Malay world and India he learns the languages and customs of many countries and travels from Constantinople to India, China, Southeast Asia and the Nusantara archipelago; he encounters also the Dutch and the Portuguese.  One of the tasks he is given is to gaze into the mouth of the dragon (in which is hidden the emperor of China,  whose face no stranger is allowed to see).  This episode reveals the danger inherent in language work, and I use it as an extended metaphor for the crucial yet precarious nature of language teaching in academia today.

E-mail Dr. Tiwon: tiwon@berkeley.edu

Her speech will take place at lunchtime on Saturday the 19th. More information on the conference can be found here:

COTSEAL/SEASSI 2014 Conference Information