Unnatural Conversations: Talking to the Dead

Linguistics Circle Research Seminars 2008 – Bangor University

Unnatural Conversations: Talking to the Dead

A research seminar on the language of spiritual mediumship

Professor Katie Wales

University of Sheffield

Wednesday 12th March, Linguistics Seminar Room, 2pm[1]

Abstract:

Despite the flourishing of spiritualism in the past 150 years, and its renewed popularity in TV and cyberspace, the actual discourse and rhetorical features of mediumship have been suprisingly neglected by linguists. As a speech event mediumship makes an interesting comparison with other speech events, such as 'ordinary' conversation.In this talk I have only time to concentrate on one major feature of the seance, namely the communication of messages from the Departed, and the implications for speech presentation theory.

[1] This talk was originally scheduled for 7 November 2007, but had to be postponed.