Word of the day: contestation
I’ve spent the day at the University of Leicester attending a seminar on digital literacy where I made a short presentation on the regulation of content with the convergence of broadcasting and the Internet [see the text on which I based my remarks here].
Now most of the participants in the seminar were academics and they speak a special language. A word that academics love is ‘contest’ – as a verb ‘to contest’, as an adjective ‘contestable’ and – most grandly – as the noun ‘contestation’. Basically this is a fancy way of saying that an argument or an idea can be challenged – and, of course, in academicia any notion can and is challenged.
In the seminar, ‘contestation’ was used twice – on both occasions by a professor.