Language and Experience: Six Lectures towards a New Paradigm in Linguistics
by
Daniel Dor, Professor, Tel-Aviv University
Fifth lecture: Function and Variability
April 30, 5:00 p.m.
From 4:30-5:00 p.m. short summary of the previous lecture
Nador 9 building, Gellner Room
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In this series of lectures, Daniel Dor presents the foundations of a new theory of language - a theory based on the investigation of the relationship between language, as a social phenomenon, and the overall context of non-linguistic experience within which it operates. Starting with the foundational role of language as a tool for the social construction of meaning, designed to allow for communication across the experiential gaps between speakers, the theory offers radically new conceptions of the linguistic sign, the meanings of words, the process of linguistic communication, the nature of grammars, the mental activities involved in the usage of language, the dialectics of language and thought - and the relationship between universality and variability. In direct contrast to all the major theories currently in the field, the overall conception of language that emerges within the theory allows for the unification of the social perspective on language with the cognitive one, and opens the way to an explicit understanding of the evolution of language.
Daniel Dor is a senior lecturer at the Department of Communication, Tel Aviv University. He has written extensively about form-meaning relationships in language, the evolution of language (together with evolutionary biologist Eva Jablonka), and the politics of language. His political writings deal with the role of the media (and the language of the media) in the construction of hegemony. One of his books, "Intifada Hits the Headlines: How the Israeli Media Misreported the Second Palestinian Uprising", won the Choice Magazine award of Book of the Year 2004 in Communication Studies.
