Hello again fellow linguists! BULA will be having several events this April you won't want to miss! General Meeting and English Dialects Discussion: April 6th @7pm in CAS B20 Join us for our General Meeting at 7 pm, where we'll be doing Officer Selection for the coming academic year. If you are interested in getting involved this is your opportunity to join the e-board and help organize fun and educational Linguistic events for the entire BU Community. We're a small group, but we have a strong foundation of committed individuals! Students planning to spend a semester abroad next year are also welcome to apply. After the meeting, we'll have our monthly discussion group. This month's theme is "Dialects of English." This includes North American, British, South African, and many other parts of the world. Think about what makes your dialect unique - do you drink soda, pop, or coke? Do you like jimmies or sprinkles on your ice cream? Do you pronounce "cot" and "caught" differently? RSVP on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=101360183283469) and take a look at our traditional JP Licks treat you could enjoy! Bert Vaux Lecture on Linguistic Profiling: April 12 @ 7pm KCB (565 Comm Ave) Room 101 Recent scientific studies have shown that humans are able to reliably identify features such as gender, race, age, and even sexual orientation from just a short sample of speech. (Test subjects also consistently infer attributes such as height, intelligence, attractiveness, and reliability from speech samples, but the accuracy of these inferences has not been investigated.) Such judgments have further been shown to influence individuals' decisions in matters of social import such as housing applications and legal trials. In this talk Vaux will survey the range of such effects, consider how and why the human brain is able to draw such inferences so accurately and quickly, and ask what (if anything) can be done to combat their harmful effects, given that linguistic profiling happens automatically and subconsciously. RSVP on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=101360183283469#!/event.php?eid=199769...) Sponsored by the BU Linguistics Association (BULA) with support from the CAS Academic Enhancement Fund. Followed by a reception. See the Event Flyer. (http://www.bu.edu/linguistics/UG/Vaux2011.pdf) Vaux will also be giving a lecture sponsored by The James Geddes, Jr. Lecture Series on April 13 @ 1 pm also in Room 101 titled "What is happening to American and World English?" In this talk Vaux present results from four surveys of almost 100,000 English speakers across the world that he has conducted over the past eight years. These results suggest that regional differences are alive and well in all components of the English language, and that British rather than American English features still dominate on the world scene. Hope to see you all at these events! Check out bula.bu.edu for more information!