I was asked to give a 10-minute presentation as a panel member on “reconceptualizing language”. We had to start off with a one-sentence summary. Because the whole talk was a brief summary of how I approach language analysis and research, I have given a summary below and kept it short.
“Language is a specialized way of getting other people to do things, but the power for this to occur comes from social relationship exchanges and not from the words themselves, and so the study of how language works is really the study of how social and societal relationship exchanges work, and how we (frequently) use words-in-context to make these happen.“
The way I approach language understanding and research is fairly radical, but not because language is seen in a radical way. Rather, to begin understanding language use and research, we have to radically change how we understand people and the way they work. That is the radical part, and the functioning of language just follows from that.
Language understanding and research mostly happens in the ways of discourse analysis but with a much bigger emphasis on analysing social exchanges as an integral part of that. But to get there, we need to radically change the way we think about people in general first. And the approach to language follows from that.
Mantras for rethinking the analysis of human lives
- No human behaviours (actions, talking, thinking, feeling) originate from ‘inside’ us (although the whole body is involved)
- We do not ‘take in’ anything through the eyes (Gibson)
- Instead we respond to changes (not 2-D retinal images) on the body surfaces with the world: the bodily response systems are complex and context-tuned to changes, but not originating
- We function more like a very complex thermostat than a computer (not as sexy I know)
- Structure is ossified function; if something is functioning in the same way over and over it looks to us like a permanent structure but everything changes eventually (e. g., grammar, mountains). Grammar appears to have a permanent structure because that is what lets us talk fast and with few errors, and because language is just so important to our lives that fast and accurate talking is vital
- All human responses involve other people; and language is only about other people
- What we call our ‘inner’ world or life are language responses, whether said out loud or not, but these also exist on the surface with the (social) environment as well, not ‘deep inside us’; these ‘inner worlds’ are worlds of discourse, narratives and fictions (and we do not invent these, Bakhtin, Kristeva)
- There are useful strategic discursive reasons (social and political) for going along with the metaphor that an ‘inner world’ exists, which is why it is still used
Where does this leave language use and the study of language use?
Following the radical changes above to thinking about people in general, here is what language use looks like:
- Language is just a behaviour we learn do as humans.
- There are no effects on physical objects no matter what you do with language; words might get other people to change the physical objects, but not the words themselves.
- Words do not refer to things; words refer other people to things.
- The only consequence or effect our language can have in the world is to change someone else’s behaviour (if they have learned to respond to that language and you have social exchanges of resources).
- We forget that learning to use (wield) a language takes a long time, and much of our childhood is spent learning the subtleties of what can be done to people with a language in different contexts and a community of speakers.
- There are a multitude of complex effects that occur from other people that do things to you and for you (commands, jokes, poetry, etc.).
- There is nothing ‘more’ to language. Language use is neither true nor false; it does not have these properties, it just does things to people in context
- Language has no special non-material effects or effects from special ‘states of consciousness’.
- Thoughts and ‘consciousness’ are just those language responses not said out loud; thinking is just ‘air-talking’, just like an ‘air guitar’.
- You can observe thinking when you observe the audiences that have shaped the language uses to occur and the contexts that shape the ‘not saying it out loud’
- Using language is only ever about getting people to do things to manage our social and societal relationship exchanges.
- All the complexities of language use (forms, grammar, etc.) arise from it being shaped by the complex effects that have been learned by listeners and what is going on in social and societal relationships. For example, grammar functions so we can have rapid effects from using language and with fewer mistakes; try talking sometime without any grammar; and it is because language is so important that we get what seems to be permanent structures (SOV, SVO), but grammars also change over time and contexts, just like mountains do.
- Whether understanding, studying or using language, the main focus needs to be on what language is getting done to people and in what contexts.
- Most things we do to people we can also do without words, but once we have the system of language is is so much quicker and accurate.
So language is actually more about our social and societal relationship exchanges than about the words themselves
So, to study how language works, how language has been shaped into its structures, and how it morphs in new ways… we need to study social and societal exchanges and how and when language uses these forces or powers.
Studying or categorizing words alone does not tell us much at all (much of sociolinguistics and psychology do just this).
Social/societal relationship exchange analysis + Language analysis = Discourse/ language use analysis
SA + LA = DA
The first bit is usually not covered well in analyses of language use. Doing this requires contextual methodologies.
So understanding and researching language use needs a lot of thought and rethinking of both how people function in general and how language is wielded by people in their lives to do things to people.
This applies to all forms of language: beliefs, rumours, poetry, commands, grammar, jokes, etc.
The real questions are:
- What can we do to people with these different types of language use? [What does poetry do to people that prose does not?]
- How are they used, and in what contexts to do what exactly?
holisticelephants 