Terry Moore

Clare College
Subject
Linguistics
College positions
Fellow
Email Address

Biography

Terence Moore read English at Trinity College, Cambridge then later, in his thirties, read Linguistics at the University of California, Los Angeles where he gained a PhD. The focus of the Department at the time was on Noam Chomsky’s ideas of an innate universal grammar. He stayed on as an Assistant Professor of Linguistics, finally moving back to England, first to the University of Essex, then to the Department of Linguistics, Cambridge. Co-author with Chris Carling of two books on language (Understanding Language: Towards a Post-Chomskyan Linguistics and The Limitations of Language both published by Macmillan) he is currently a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge. These days when not writing poetry – a collection of his poems, Voices in my Head was published by Black Apollo Press – he is exploring John Locke’s radical ideas on the nature, use and signification of language. What matters most to him is bringing out the relevance of Locke’s ideas to our use of language today.  In 2017 Melrose Books published Dr Moore's Understanding Misunderstanding: Locke Holds the Key, in which the author holds a series of conversations in 21st century language with 17th century philosopher, John Locke.