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Speaker: Peter Sharpe, author of Language: The Big Picture (Continuum, 2009)
Topic: "Sharpe's Language"
When: Starting at 6:30 p.m. on Sunday, 25 October 2009
Admission: Buy a copy of Language: The Big Picture from Good Day Books
Peter Sharpe was born in Plymouth, England. He studied English literature and education at Southlands College, which later became part of Brunel University. After graduating, he taught English, first in London and then as a foreign language to adults in Sweden. Enjoying his stay in the "near abroad," he decided to roam further afield and came to Japan in 1977 as a TEFL teacher. After several years, he landed a part-time university post, which enabled him to study Japanese at International Christian University, Tokyo. When his daughter was born in 1984, he and his wife returned to the U.K., where he began an M.A. in linguistics at Exeter University that eventually led to a Ph.D. and a teaching post in Exeter's graduate program. On receiving research funding in 1991, he began to assemble an English-Japanese dictionary for students of Japanese. In 1992, he signed a contract with Kodansha International and began to compile this dictionary in earnest.
Sharpe returned to Japan in 1997 to become a professor in the Faculty of Foreign Languages at Takushoku University. While at Takushoku, he established an exchange program between Takushoku and Exeter so that his Japanese students could study English at Exeter. This study-abroad program is still running. Returning to Japan also enabled him to liaise more closely with Kodansha’s editors on the final stages of Kodansha’s Communicative English-Japanese Dictionary (Kodansha International, 2006). Freed from a task that had lasted almost 15 years, he began to examine his papers and lectures with a view to integrating them into his second book. He stopped teaching at Takushoku University in 2008 to devote more time to this book, which eventually became Language: The Big Picture (Continuum, 2009). Although written for students of linguistics, Sharpe's Language, a reader-friendly introduction to some of the main issues surrounding language, can be read and enjoyed by anyone interested in language. He is now working on a follow-up, tentatively entitled Of Language and Thought, that he hopes to complete in 2010. He lives with his wife in Musashino City, near Mitaka.
To attend Peter Sharpe's BookNotes presentation, you must purchase a copy of Langauge: The Big Picture from our shop. Paperback copies of Sharpe's Language are available for sale at Good Day Books for two thousand five hundred twenty yen (¥2520) each, tax included.
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