37.424, FYI: STAL Seminar, Elisabeth Camp, "Why Do Mantras Move Us?"

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-37-424. Fri Jan 30 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 37.424, FYI: STAL Seminar, Elisabeth Camp, "Why Do Mantras Move Us?"

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Date: 29-Jan-2026
From: Dan Zeman [danczeman at gmail.com]
Subject: STAL Seminar, Elisabeth Camp, "Why Do Mantras Move Us?"


The Slurring Terms Across Languages (STAL) network
(https://sites.google.com/view/stalnetwork/home) an international and
interdisciplinary network whose primary aim is to promote work on
slurs, pejoratives, expressives and evaluative terms from less studied
languages, invites you to the fifth talk of the 2025-2026 academic
year. The invited speaker is Elisabeth Camp (Rutgers University), who
will give a talk entitled "Why Do Mantras Move Us?" (see the abstract
below). The event will take place online on Monday, FEBRUARY 9,
14:30-16:00 Central European Time (CET), and is part of the of STAL
network seminar series (program here:
https://sites.google.com/view/stalnetwork/seminar) If you want to
participate, please write to stalnetwork at gmail.com for the Zoom link.
All welcome!
ABSTRACT:
Why do mantras like 'What Would Jesus Do?', ‘Boys will be boys’, and
‘It is what it is’ bear repeating?  Orthodox analyses don’t suffice:
not only are such mantras overtly trivial; they don’t appear to
indirectly implicate substantive information, emotional affect, or
social affiliation. I propose that they function as frames, by
encapsulating regulative principles for interpreting their topics in
an open-ended, intuitive way. Frames’ schematic evocativeness makes
them useful tools for coordinating interpretation and action across
variations in assumptions, attitudes, and applications.  But at the
same time, their intuitive, amorphous flexibility can also make them
insidious devices for coercing and seducing resistant audiences.
Explaining the interpretive power of framing devices requires
expanding the orthodox explanatory toolkit beyond standard
propositional attitudes like belief, to encompass perspectives.

Linguistic Field(s): Philosophy of Language
                     Semantics




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