Professor Angela Smith will be giving a talk in the School of Culture research seminar series. Her focus is Channel 4’s Naked Attraction. This is a show that opens with the assertion that ‘Online dating has been a complete nightmare […] with the status symbols we wear getting in the way of finding our perfect mate.’ With full nudity, lingering close-ups and graphic descriptions, many viewers took to Twitter to express dismay that the show had made it to mainstream television, and led to the Guardian referring to it as symptomatic of the dystopian media landscape of 2016. Angela's paper will explore how the shock of graphic nudity is ameliorated by the linguistic strategies of positive politeness that all participants seem to collude with. Such amelioration would appear to be a defence against accusations of voyeuristic and pornographic content on mainstream television.
Wednesday 21 March 2018
Reg Vardy
104A, 4pm-5pm
Light refreshments and Q&A after the talk
