ToK Conference

On Thursday 18th March, Year 12 IB students went to Chelmsford (in Essex) to attend a Theory of Knowledge conference on ‘Language’. We listened to two speakers, whose talks were separated by a group activity with the other schools and a surprisingly delicious lunch.

The first speaker, Julian Baginni, told us about the importance and significance of words themselves, how they are ‘value laden’- even seemingly ‘normal’, unbiased words or phrases can bring with them prejudices or emotions,  how they have ‘meaning beyond their meaning’, and how they ‘carve up the world in different ways’ -  you could, for example, separate the parents of the UK into ‘unmarried’ and ‘married’ just as you could separate them into ‘committed and uncommitted’ which, while seeming similar at first glance, mean entirely different things.  He showed a variety of quotes from magazine and newspaper articles, demonstrating how words or phrases had been manipulated to give the article the desired angle, teaching us many new ‘TOK’ phrases along the way.

After a short break, we were split into groups of four, each group given two newspapers and told to select an article particularly rich in language which demonstrates some of the ideas the Julian had put past us. After lunch we presented our analysis of our articles to the other groups, then listened to the second speaker, Stephen Law, who explained about two theories of naming; the description theory - stating that common nouns are synonymous with their description - and the causal theory - that common nouns are used to describe what other people use it to describe, regardless of whether it is the ‘right’ name. Being a far more philosophical and ‘TOK’-orientated talk, it was rather harder to understand than Julian’s talk, but I personally preferred it.

The conference certainly gave everyone’s brain an enjoyable work-out, and I think we all agreed it was well worth the nearly two hour coach journey there and back.