In honour of Canadian Multiculturalism Day, which comes around each year on June 27, on VIEW to the U, we are talking about identity that directly correlates to the language that we use.

On this episode, featured guest, Professor Ai Taniguchi talks about her work as a linguist in UTM’s Department of Language Studies, as well as her art, which animates and illustrates much of her scholarly pursuits.

Ai specializes in semantics and pragmatics – for those of us who need a primer, or a refresher, as the case may be - she explains both over the course of this interview. But she also goes into detail about the graphics-based project she spearheaded: L’IMAGE, which stands for Language, Identity, Multiculturalism and Global Empowerment. L’IMAGE is a project that brings the lived experiences of multilingual UofT students, both domestic and international, to life in the form of comics.

In our chat, she is also very candid speaking about her recent diagnosis of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder – ADHD for short. Ai feels that neurodiversity, which basically means a person’s brain works differently than someone with a brain and way of learning that is considered “neurotypical,” should be discussed more often and be less stigmatized. She says it is her own neurodiversity that has fed her creativity and fuelled her art and innovative pursuits, like the L’IMAGE project.

Resources
- A full transcript of this interview is available at https://uoft.me/9qg.
- Visit Professor Ai Taniguchi's website at https://www.lingcomics.com/.
- Her Twitter handle is https://twitter.com/LinguistAiT.
- Her Instagram account is https://www.instagram.com/linguistait/.
- For Pan Cooke, the illustrator CD mentioned (who does dating as well as social justice-related comics), go to his instagram page at https://www.instagram.com/thefakepan/?hl=en.