The Speaker.

Roly Sussex OAM has been explaining language to Australians for many years. He is the entertaining and much loved host of ABC radio's  "A Word in Your Ear" and writes a regular column "Word limit" for the Courier Mail.  No mere populist, he has a PhD in Russian Language from the University of London and is Emeritus Professor of Applied Language Studies at the School of Languages and Comparative Cultural Studies of the University of Queensland; an expert in the comparative linguistics of European languages; and an honorary life member of Alliance Française!

He says "Linguistics is the scientific study of language, and language is at the centre of intellectual, cultural and social activity".  This has led him to insights into pandemic communication (more of that at a later date) and with his medical partner Susan Evans he has been exploring the central role of language in interdisciplinary studies particularly around communication and pain.

So come along and in our usual BD FTC fashion be intrigued, entertained and educated by Roly's eclectic insights into the way we communicate.

Update from Roly on title and subject: "The Garden of Language, or how a linguist does disciplines. I’ll be talking inter alia about pain, but the entry point is where linguistics sits as a discipline and how it relates to other disciplines."