Oxford Events, the new replacement for OxTalks, will launch on 16th March. The two-week OxTalks freeze period starts on Monday 2nd March. During this time, there will be no facility to publish or edit events. The existing OxTalks site will remain available to view during this period. Once Oxford Events launches, you will need a Halo login to submit events. Full details are available on the Staff Gateway.
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.
