Steve Nagle, professor of English at Coastal Carolina University, will give a public lecture as part of Coastal's Distinguished Teacher- Scholar Lecturer Series on Thursday, Oct. 5, at 7:30 p.m. in the Wall Auditorium on the Coastal campus. The lecture, "The life and times of the English language: an unauthorized biography," is free and open to the public.

Nagle is the fifth recipient of the Distinguished Teacher-Scholar Lecturer award, sponsored annually by Horry Telephone Cooperative, Inc. The award is presented to a faculty member who has outstanding abilities as a teacher, scholar and communicator. The recipient of the honor delivers a lecture during the fall semester on an original topic drawn from his or her area of expertise.

In his lecture, Nagle will describe how the English language developed and how it continues to evolve.

A native of Brooklyn, N.Y., Nagle joined the Coastal faculty in 1972 and has been director of International Programs at Coastal since 1987. He is founder of the Palmetto Partnership for International Exchange and is a former executive director of the South Carolina Consortium for International Studies. In 1999 he was named a Fellow of University College-Northampton in the United Kingdom.

He was educated at the University of South Carolina, where he earned a bachelor's degree in French in 1970, a master's degree in linguistics in 1972 and a doctorate in linguistics in 1986. He has published numerous scholarly articles on linguistics and is currently editing a book on Southern English.