Why Do Mantras Move Us?

Elisabeth Camp (Rutgers - New Brunswick)

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) 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 [email protected] 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.