Southern Illinois University Carbondale will be hosting an international workshop on potential extraterrestrial communication, or xenolinguistics.
Jeffrey Punske, an associate professor of linguistics at SIU, is one of the co-sponsors workshop.
Punske says that xenolinguistics is about the hypotheticals, what the language or communication of a non-human or alien intelligence might look like.
"We're trying to imagine what are the necessary components that sort of underlies what we think about as language," Punske said, "Underlies the things we think about as communcation."
Scholars will come together from across the globe to talk about xenolinguistics. Irene Pepperberg from Boston University and Matthew Brown from SIU are just two of the scholar who will be speaking at the workshop.
Punske says the workshop is open to the public and that he hopes the ideas and thoughts of those outside the field of study will be able to spark new ideas and provide a new perspective.
"The ways in which folks that aren't sort of embedded in certain academic fields might approach or think about a question can also be really invigorating and an important perspective." Punske said.
The workshop is being held on Saturday, November 9th in the Sharp Museum Auditorium from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.. Admission is free, individuals can also register to watch the program on Zoom.
