Student Profiles: Joe Wingenbach
I’m a first year M.A. student and my primary interests are in the development of English as a language. Composition and British literature are also of great interest to me, but I am absolutely fascinated in the developments of the language that have brought it from the highly inflected language of the Germanic immigrants/invaders, through the dialects of Middle English, all the way up to its current status as a legitimate international language. I want to learn about the uniqueness of English and what sets it apart from other languages (mostly other western European). Why is English an international language? Does it have a greater capacity to be adaptive than other languages? Is it due to the expansiveness of colonial England? These are all questions I hope to address during my time here.