OxTalks will soon be transitioning to Oxford Events (full details are available on the Staff Gateway). A two-week publishing freeze is expected in early Hilary to allow all events to be migrated to the new platform. During this period, you will not be able to submit or edit events on OxTalks. The exact freeze dates will be confirmed as soon as possible.
If you have any questions, please contact halo@digital.ox.ac.uk
Join us for the first in our series of work-in-progress seminars, where researchers in our network present in-progress papers for discussion and feedback. This seminar will be a presentation followed by discussion.
I discuss the problems of giving definitions of linguistic terms especially in contentious fields such as religious studies. Alternatives are considered in the form of ostension and the use of exemplars. Having considered problems with some definitions of divination, I provide a new one that couples a rubric with a list of exemplary types and exemplary questions. The exemplars demarcate the domain to which the rubric should be applied. This definition does not rely on beliefs, deities (the supernatural) or modes of cognition.
