Cameron Mozafari Presents Talks in Newcastle and Germany

This summer, Cameron Mozafari presented at the International Cognitive Linguistics Conference and at the History of Rhetoric conference. Keep reading to learn more.

On July 20, Michael Israel and Cameron presented at the International Cognitive Linguistics Conference (ICLC) in Newcastle, UK.  Their talk was titled "Reframing Prescriptivism: Rhetorical Construction Grammar and L1 Writing Instruction."  In their paper they argued that, for the last half century, linguists' avoidance of offering useful advice to native language writing instructors, who are often characterized as "prescriptivists" and thus characterized as misinformed about language, is itself misguided, as both linguists and cognitive scientists more generally have many insights to offer on the subject.  But for those insights to be of any use, linguists must learn how to share them with compositionists, and compositionists must be convinced to listen.

On July 30, Cameron presented at the International Society for the History of Rhetoric (ISHR) conference in Tübingen, Germany.  His talk was titled "Culture and Cognition in Emotion and Enthymemes."  The paper approaches the emotional appeal simultaneously through a classical rhetorical and a cognitive linguistic perspective, drawing on the Aristotelian concept of the enthymeme as an inferential process through which feelings can be aroused toward some topic, as well as the cognitive semantic ideas of semantic frames and conceptual integration.  He concludes by stressing the importance of detailed attention to emotional arguments, as cross-cultural misunderstandings arise from inferential processes stemming from a lack of personal and cultural common ground.

Cameron received the Jacob K. Goldhaber Travel Grant to present at these international conferences in late July.