Keynote Address
The Irritating Voice and The Written Word Heading link
4:00-6:00pm
Conference Room 1-470, Daley Library
Dr. Gabriella Safran
Eva Chernov Lokey Professor in Jewish Studies
Professor and Director, Slavic Languages and Literatures
Chair, Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages
Stanford University
We judge and categorize people based on the sounds they make, and some sounds grate on our nerves. Paradoxically, political rhetoricians and fiction writers use that irritation for their own purposes. Using methodology from linguistics and literature, this talk considers the functions of the irritating voice in a variety of cases taken over two centuries.