About the L'IMAGE Project
This is the website for the inaugural cycle of the UofT Language, Identity, Multiculturalism and Global Empowerment (L'IMAGE) Project. This website was created by the project lead, Ai Taniguchi. L'IMAGE (pronounced the French way!) is a public linguistics and graphic linguistics project with two major objectives: 1. To educate the university community about linguistic diversity in order to increase community members' intercultural competence, and 2. To learn about real students' lived linguistic experiences to inform linguistics educators' teaching practices and universities' EDID practices. In this cycle, I interviewed 13 amazing multilingual students at UofT, and turned stories about their multilingualism into digital comics. Each story is accompanied by a "5-Minute Linguistics" infographic that has educational content about the language(s) spoken by the student. These comics and infographics are being used globally as teaching and public outreach materials in linguistics and beyond.
(photo by Nick Iwanyshyn)
[Image alt-text and long description: A photo of Ai Taniguchi taken in 2022 in her office. She is a Japanese woman in her 30s. She has a medium skin tone and long slightly wavy black hair parted slightly to the left (from the perspective of the viewer), possibly with highlights towards the tip. She's in her office, which looks a bit cluttered, seated at her desk with a large silver monitor with the Apple logo on the back. We basically see her above the waist, and her lower half is hidden by the top surface of the desk. There is a large black drawing tablet in front of the monitor, and Ai has a black pen for the tablet in her right hand, and she is looking at the tablet monitor and seems to be drawing something with it. Her gaze is downwards towards the drawing tablet and she has a neutral expression. She is wearing an untextured, matte light purple blazer with what appears to be a white cotton tank top and a high-waisted hot pink bottom piece.]