You are warmly invited to the fourth in the seminar series Discourse, Culture and Society, hosted by the Languages Group at Edinburgh Napier.

Wed 26th April 2017, 3-4.30 (Coffee and refreshments will be served)

Room 2/04, Edinburgh Napier Business School, Craiglockhart Campus, 219 Colinton Rd, Edinburgh EH14 1DJ – map [log in to unmask],-3.2394325,15z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x0:0x4ea0c6f360329f25?sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiq2bbPvejKAhWBYw8KHb8uCoIQ_BIIazAK">here

Prof John E. Joseph (University of Edinburgh): The Concrete and the Abstract in the Language of Politics

Until well into the modern period, concrete was used to mean what is now called abstract. The terms originated as grammatical descriptors for related pairs of nouns and adjectives, then came to be reinterpeted as logical categories tied to the presence or absence of a clear mental image. They remain ambiguous, yet are used as though every word fell clearly into one or the other category. Mid-20th century critiques of political language focussed on how ‘abstract’ language enables governments to deceive and control ordinary citizens, and current political rhetoric continues the tradition – as does, surprisingly, fMRI studies of language functions in the brain. This talk proposes taking abstract and concrete not as semantic properties of words, but as aspects of how words are used, and reimaging their link to thought processes along subtler lines.

Free event. All welcome. Please RSVP to Karen Fisher at [log in to unmask] by 19^th April 2017.

For more information about the series, please contact Natalia Bremner [log in to unmask], Mabel Victoria [log in to unmask] and Michael Kranert [log in to unmask]

Next events in the series:

Wed 24th May 2017, 3-4.30, ROOM 2/04, Craiglockhart Campus

Prof Fiona Copland (University of Stirling)

Native English Speaking Teachers (NESTs) and Local English Teachers (LETs): Reconciling the theoretical and the practical