Talking about a good start to a stellar career in Linguistics, that’s the feeling Carmen Coetsee got when she recently received the Young Linguist of the Year Award at this years South African Linguistic and Applied Linguistic Conference (Salals) held in Johannesburg from 25-27 June at the University of Johannesburg (https://salals.org.za/conferences/).
The annual conference is a unique and special gathering of academics, researchers and students from all over the world in the linguistic disciplines and its aims is to recognize and celebrate research from all over the world and works to promote excellent language research and encourage young South African research. Miss Coetsee research was accepted for presentation at the conference and she has never presented at a conference before and her Master research received overwhelming recognition. “This award means the world to me. To even be attending the conference and be able to present my research among so many incredible researchers was such an honour, so to win this award was beyond anything I expected. I feel grateful” said Miss Coetsee.
This award proves Carmen’s career in academia is on a good path and direction considering that it was her first time presenting at a conference as an academic and bags herself an award, clearly judges of the conferences and the board saw great potential in her academic career pursuit. These are clearly seeds of great career ahead and a prosperous academic journey for this young academic from the Child Language Development Node housed at Stellenbosch University.
Miss Coetsee completed her MA in Child language and her unique research focused on language input to Afrikaans infants in lower socioeconomic communities. She looked at how parents speak to their infants in one Afrikaans community. In research, globally and nationally, she confirms that there very little about the language socialization practices of communities which fall outside the norm (such as understudied communities like those of a low socioeconomic standing and those speak under researched languages, like Afrikaans. “Only when we know the “linguistic layout” of a community (i.e. what the language socialization practices are) can we start working with speech therapists to tackle issues like language delays in children. So, my research is beginning to map the layout of one such community with the intention to create intervention programs down the line” she said.
Miss Coetsee is on a right academic path and plans to further her studies. She is currently project manager and young researcher for the Child Language Development Node housed at Stellenbosch University.
Her advice to other aspirant academics or those in her discipline, she reckons there is still so much work to be done on South Africa 12 official languages, especially in how children learn these languages. We have such a rich language composition in SA that it would be a shame to not study how our youngest citizens learn, practice and grow in these languages. On behalf of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and Maties, we wish Carmen a stellar academic career full of achievements and accolades.