Third Year Hon. Mention: How to Find a Lost Language: My Search for My Grandfather's Words

PRWR 3730, Substantive Editing. Course Director: Dunja Baus

Abstract

One of the prompts provided for this assignment is a Czech proverb: “For each language you know, you are a different person.” In trying to uncover the mysteries of the language they heard their grandfather speak – a language often derided as “gibberish” - the author of “How to Find a Lost Language” discovers the multifaceted identities their grandfather experienced in his linguistic journey from a small town in Sicily through the phases of his life in Canada. Employing a meticulous and wide-ranging research process, the author explores the sociolinguistic factors and cultural features that transformed their grandfather’s speech into a specific idiolect that reflected “all the people he knew and the places he visited” – a testament to a life well-lived and constituting a cherished memory that lives on in those who loved him.