Please join us for our next Brown Bag event of the semester on Wednesday, February 14, 12pm.

Dr. Renan Castro Ferreira is a visiting postdoctoral researcher at ARiEAL and the MELD Research Lab. He is an inaugural member of our International Scholar Award Program cohort.

Dr. Ferreira will present a paper titled “Bilingual minds in motion: exploring conceptual transfer in the use of English as a foreign language.” Before arriving at McMaster, Dr. Ferreira completed a PhD in Linguistics from the Universidade Federal de Pelotas in Brazil. This is a great opportunity for all of you to learn more about the cutting-edge work of one of our international visiting researcher!

Dr. Ferreira provided the following summary:

How do the languages we speak influence the way we think? That is a tricky, controversial question. There are already quite a few studies showing intriguing differences between distant languages, but how about closer ones, such as Portuguese and English? Could it be that the way native Portuguese speakers think motion may influence how they express that concept in L2 English? I think so, and in this presentation – an intersection between my PhD research and my current work at ARiEAL – I will share some data and insights into how I think that happens. The journey of learning a new language is more than just assimilating new vocabulary and grammar; it involves a fascinating process of reorganizing our mental frameworks, especially when faced with concepts that do not match entirely across our languages. See you there!