Common Ground and Imagined Communities

The study of discourse already occupies a prominent place within the humanities, but what can the study of a much differently defined discourse in the study of language offer to fields such as history? In this episode, we attempt to bridge the gap between language and cognitive science and the field of history through a comparison of two analogous concepts: the linguistic notion of "common ground" and a sociological understanding of "the imagined community."


Daniel Pontillo is a doctoral candidate in Brain and Cognitive Science at the University of Rochester
Chris Gratien is a doctoral candidate at Georgetown University researching the social and environmental history of the Ottoman Empire and the modern Middle East. (see academia.edu)

Episode No. 149
Release Date: 16 March 2014
Location: Rochester, NY
Editing and Production: Chris Gratien


Special acknowledgements to Ayça Baydar and her podcast on Karamanlı culture the "conversation with a Rum peasant" described in the episode.

Citation: "Common Ground and Imagined Communities," Daniel Pontillo and Chris Gratien, Ottoman History Podcast, No. 149 (16 March 2014) http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2014/03/imagined-communities-anderson-history-linguistics.html.

Listeners might also like:

#040 Gaze: Eyes, Seeing and Being Seen | Daniel Pontillo
#114 Painting the Peasant in Modern Turkey | Seçil Yılmaz
#065 Karamanlı Culture in the Ottoman Empire | Ayça Baydar
#126 Jewish Citizens on Exhibit | Alma Heckman
#084 Palestinianism and Zionism in the Ottoman Empire | Louis Fishman

Note for the listener: This podcast is not primarily a work of primary source research. It is a synthesis of publicly available information and draws extensively from the works below, which are also mentioned during the course of the episode. For the purposes of academic citation, we encourage you to consult these works.

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Clark, Herbert H. Arenas of Language Use. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.

Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 1991. 

Comments

ماثيو said…
Great job on this one, I was listening enthralled. I always laugh at how easily jargon rolls off of Chris Gratien's tongue.
Chris Gratien said…
i deliberately flout the maxim of this asteism and thank you sir!

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