DANIEL DOR IN CONVERSATION WITH AYŞE ÇAĞLAR
SAMSTAG, 26.09.2026 / 14h00
AKADEMIE DER BILDENDEN KÜNSTE WIEN, SITZUNGSSAAL
What if the Western obsession with finding the “perfect” language has fundamentally misled our understanding of how language actually works? Linguist DANIEL DOR traces how, from Ancient Greece to Noam Chomsky, thinkers have pursued an ideal of linguistic perfection rooted in the belief that language is divine, socially formative, or genetically given. In opposition to this idealism, there has always been a minority tradition that saw language as a human invention—as flawed as humanity itself. In conversation with IWM Permanent Fellow AYŞE ÇAĞLAR, Dor argues that language’s very imperfections are the source of its power.
DANIEL DOR is a linguist, communication researcher, and political activist who recently retired from Tel Aviv University. His work focuses on human language and its evolution, as well as the role of media in shaping political hegemony. In The Instruction of Imagination (Oxford University Press, 2015), Dor rethinks language as a socially constructed tool that enables speakers to bridge the experiential gaps between them by instructing each other’s imaginations.
© Guy Gerstner