Masters’ School Seminar 16.03.2022 3 p.m.

The next Masters’ School Seminar will be held on March 16, 3 p.m.

Our guest is professor Isidora Stojanovic.

Professor Isidora Stojanovic
is a philosopher of language and a semanticist, working (since 2015) as a senior researcher for the Centre National de RecherchesScientifiques (CNRS) at the Jean Nicod Institute in Paris. Her main research topics are context-dependence, the semantics-pragmatics boundary, indexicals, de se stuff, and evaluative discourse.
She has defended a novel conception of linguistic architecture, which makes room for a tripartite distinction between semantics, pragmatics, and what she calls ‘prepragmatics’. She has argued that this novel conception explains better phenomena such as demonstrative reference, quantifier domain restriction, or the context-sensitivity of gradable adjectives.
Her current research aims to explore the variety of linguistic mechanisms that underscore evaluative discourse. One direction of research concerns the classification of adjectives and aims to put forward a battery of linguistic criteria that tease apart subjectivity from evaluativity. Another direction studies the ways in which the valence evaluative judgments may depend on the context. Yet a third direction explores the semantics and pragmatics of expressive meaning, as when we use pejoratives, such as ’jerk’.
While her research focuses primarily on theoretical questions, she appeals to methodologies from experimental pragmatics as well as corpus linguistics. Her work on evaluative discourse has a broader scope, reaching into metaethics and aesthetics, as well as the epistemology of disagreement.
IsidoraStojanovicobtained her PhD in Cognitive Science, Ecole Polytechnique in 2002 (Resolving Indexicals), PhD in Philosophy, Stanford University in 2007 (What Is Said. An Inquiry Into Reference, Meaning, and Content), and Habilitationat the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in 2014 (La Signification à l’épreuve du contexte). She authored numerous articles and lectured widely. She is a Subject Editor (Philosophy of Language) for Thought: A Journal of Philosophy, Associate Editor for Linguistics and Philosophy, Area Editor for Ergo: an Open Access Journal of Philosophy, Consulting Editorfor Theoria, and a member of the Editorial Board for Topoi: an International Review of Philosophy . It should be mentioned that she was an external project reviewer for the National Science Centre of Poland – Narodowe Centrum Nauki (NCN), OPUS Funding Scheme (2019) and an external referee for FNP (Foundation for Polish Science), Prize (2019).

When harrowing is good: some reflections on valence in aesthetic discourse

Abstract

Adjectives such as ‘harrowing’, ‘disturbing’, ‘terrifying’ and ‘shocking’ have a negative valence, at least looking from a lexical point of view; they express emotions and experiences that are considered to be negative. Nevertheless, when used to assess works of aesthetics (in particular, in literature, film, and theatre), they typically express positive evaluations. Adjectives such as ‘intense’ and ‘surprising’, on the other hand, are neither positive nor negative. However, they are often used to express value judgments, and they acquire their valence in context. This talk aims at examining the nature of aesthetic discourse and exploring the mechanisms that allow negatively valenced terms to give expression to positive evaluations, and nonvalenced terms to give expression to either positive or negative evaluations, depending on the context.