Language in context seminar

POSTPONED until further notice.

Speaker: Tom Bartlett (University of Glasgow, School of Critical Studies)

Title: No Gods and Precious Few Heroes: Towards a materialist account of context and social change

Abstract: In this talk I will bring together the architecture of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), a theory which normally considers language as a social phenomenon to the relative neglect of the psychological, with concepts from systems theory (Kretzschmar 2015), evolutionary biolinguistics (Pennisi and Falzone 2016) and cultural evolution (Rogers 1989; Rendell et al. 2010; Pagel 2012). Combining these frameworks goes some way to providing a materialist account of the relationship between language and context as a metastable system – a system that is stable enough to be recognisable and usable, yet dynamic enough to cater to synchronic variation and stimulate diachronic change.

In the first part of the talk I will provide an outline of the architecture of SFL, with a focus on the indeterminate relationship between context and semantics - “the cracks where the light gets in” (Cohen 1992) and through which social innovation emerges. In the second part, I will draw on evolutionary theory to account for the contours of variation across contexts and the processes of change that typify a metastable system. And in the third part, I will discuss the implications of the theoretical framework in analysing data from nursing handover meetings.

References:

• Cohen, Leonard. 1992. Anthem.
• Kretzschmar, W. A. 2015. Language and Complex Systems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Pagel, Mark. 2012. Wired for Culture: The Natural History of Human Cooperation. London: Penguin.
• Pennisi, Antonio and Alessandra Falzone. 2016. Darwinian Biolinguistics: Theory and History of a Naturalistic Philosophy of Language and Pragmatics. Cham, Switzerland: Springer.
• Rogers, Alan R. 1989 Does biology constrain culture? American Anthropologist 90 (4), pp.819-831
• Rendell, L. et al. 2010. Why copy others? Insights from the Social Learning Strategies Tournament Science 328, pp. 208-13

Further information

This is followed immediately (16:30 - 17:30) by a discussion and networking session for all staff and students in the 7th Floor Common Room, Dugald Stewart Building, 3 Charles Street, Edinburgh, EH8 9AD.