As part of Instituto Cervantes de Manila’s ongoing commitment to exploring the Hispanic language and culture, the Intramuros branch will host Guadalupe Ruiz Fajardo on 9 December 2025 at 2:00 p.m., for a lecture titled How Difficult It Is to Converse (and Why That’s Fascinating)
A renowned scholar of conversation analysis and Spanish language teaching, Ruiz Fajardo, senior lecturer at Columbia University and specialist in the teaching of interactional competence, brings decades of research on the dynamics of everyday talk and cross-cultural communication.
Her lecture is going to show the hidden layers and intricacies of an act that we consider trivial: communication. She uses funny and familiar instances, from the shortness of English hellos to the long goodbyes of Spanish. A way to subtly provoke the audience to think about the different ways in which people communicate and nothing but the simplest exchanges happen. The audience will witness and understand how languages indicate consensus, control breaks in conversation and imbue culture with presence besides why the act of
speaking could still be so surprising and that is because it takes the whole world with its diversity to create more than one of the same conversation moments.
In the spirit of gatherings that highlight human communication, this event promises an afternoon of insight and reflection. Instituto Cervantes de Manila welcomes the public to join and see everyday conversation anew. Entrance is free. Seats can be reserved here: https://forms.office.com/e/3xMY8FgtkN
For more information, please visit the Instituto Cervantes de Manila website at https://manila.cervantes.es or follow them on Facebook at facebook.com/InstitutoCervantesManila.
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