Writing at the Creative Edge: Tracing the Evolution of a New Idea in Language, SOAS
Channel: SOAS University of London
Date: 2016-12-06

https://www.soas.ac.uk/linguistics
This seminar titled "Writing at the Creative Edge: Tracing the Evolution of a New Idea in Language" was given by Martha Pennington at the Linguistics Department, SOAS University of London on 29 November 2016.
Find out more about this event: https://goo.gl/6Y31Gw

The presentation aims to reveal the dynamic process through which a new idea is created and contextualized in language, based on multiple analyses of a groundbreaking scholarly text. Lexicogrammatical analysis of the illustrative text shows a progressive unfolding of the author’s idea in language that cumulatively builds meaning through simple sentence structure, repetition, and complex nominalization. Rhetorical analysis uncovers strategies of definition, argumentation, narration, and persuasion used to attract an audience to a new idea linked to existing knowledge within a specific scholarly milieu. Psychological research on creativity offers further analytical orientations and insights into how a scholar propels a field in a new direction by bringing others into a creative space that both builds on and challenges aspects of existing knowledge. Reflections by the text’s author describe a constant awareness of writing at the creative edge of expression, pushing beyond the limits of what has been said before in evolving ideas in a two-sided writing-thinking process. These combined perspectives demonstrate how a writer can function as a new idea “broker,” leveraging conventionality and prior knowledge interactively with novelty, to entextualize an idea in a written form that intersubjectively positions the reader to both understand it and appreciate its significance.