Postgraduate Linguistic Lunch Seminar Series
Tuesday, 12 February 2019, 12:15 – 1:45pm 
Papers by Eamonn McGrattan (TCD), Xun Liu (TCD) and Deirdre Nic Chárthaigh (TCD) as part of the Postgraduate Linguistic Lunch Seminar Series organised by School of Linguistic, Speech & Communication Sciences.
Eamonn McGrattan, Kenneth Burke on Language as Symbolic Action
This presentation will focus on the contribution of the critic and philosopher Kenneth Burke (1897-1993) to American thought and Rhetorical Theory. At the heart of Burke's decades-long intellectual project was a critical distinction between "(nonsymbolic) motion/(symbolic) action." Nonsymbolic motion, kínēsis, represents, for Burke, the unending movement of that vast realm of mute physical bodies directed only by the laws of cause-and-effect. Symbolic action, by contrast, represents the type of discreet movement (and/or potentiality for movement) brought into the world by bodies capable of acquiring "a conventional, arbitrary symbol system." This capacity to be moved or swerved in the world by words, Burke termed "symbolicity."
Eamonn McGrattan is an IRC Scholar at the Department of History. His research focuses on American intellectual and cultural history in the interwar years. He has worked as a teacher and lecturer with UCD Adult Education, as a researcher with InQuest Research Group, and was a former Fox International Fellow at Yale University.
Xun Liu, Transformation of the Texts: The Formation of Chinese Vernacular Novels
The Chinese vernacular novels (Chinese: 白话文小说) are nowadays considered as literary classics. In this category, the most worldly renowned ones include Water Margin (1350), Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Mid-1400s), Journey to the West (Mid-1500s), etc.. However, this particular literary style of the Chinese language in which those novels were written cannot be seriously classified as 'classical Chinese'. This talk will trace back to the origin of this written form of vernacular Chinese by drawing a clear historical line illustrating a literary style formed from religious writings to giant literary pieces.
Xun Liu is a PhD candidate based in Trinity Centre for Asian Studies. She is currently researching on political discourse appertaining to conceptual metaphor analyses in the case of Chinese vernacular classics of The High Era.
Deirdre Nic Chárthaigh, Bodach an Chóta Lachtna: some linguistic features
This talk will analyse some linguistic features of the Early Modern Irish tale 'Bodach an Chóta Lachtna', with a particular focus on departures from the literary standard of Classical Irish (c. 1200–1650). It will also discuss some editorial decisions regarding such developments. More generally, It will evaluate the usefulness of the linguistic dating of Early Modern Irish prose.
Deirdre is a PhD candidate in the Department of Irish and Celtic Studies. She is working on a first scholarly edition of 'Bodach an Chóta Lachtna', an Early Modern Irish text from the Finn cycle. Her wider research interests include bardic poetry and the manuscript tradition in Ireland in the post-classical period. Deirdre is an IRC Postgraduate Scholar and holds a non-foundation scholarship at Trinity College Dublin.
About the series
The Linguistic Lunch series is organised by School of Linguistic, Speech & Communication Sciences seeks to feature postgraduate researchers working on any linguistic subdiscipline (applied linguistics, historical linguistics, neurolinguistics, deaf studies, etc.). The series consists of one hour seminars where postgraduates can present on their projects in short, 11-minute lightning talks aimed at an audience of their peers and other interested parties. These seminars are a great forum for getting experience speaking about your research in an informal and friendly environment, and for meeting some of the other students in the college's research community.
Campus Location: Trinity Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Research Institute
Accessibility: Yes
Room: Neill Lecture Theatre
Event Category: Conferences, Lectures and Seminars, Workshops and Training
Type of Event: One-time event
Audience: Undergrad, Postgrad, Alumni, Faculty & Staff, Public
Cost: Free
Contact Email: linguisticlunch@gmail.com
