A.
Building
Things through Language
In
Chapter 1 we argued that language-in-use is about saying, doing, and being. We
argued, as well, that by saying, doing, and being we enact certain “games” or
“practices” (e.g., committee meetings, a Yu-Gi-Oh! play session, an
argument in court, a turf battle between gangs, teaching reading to a
firstgrade class, “small talk” with a neighbor, asking someone out on a date) which,
in turn, give meaning to our saying, doing, and being. These “games” or
practices always belong to social groups (e.g., street-gang members, lawyers,
anime fans), cultures (e.g., Americans, African-Americans, Native Americans),
or institutions (e.g., universities, schools, governments). So when we enact
these “games” or practices, we also sustain these social groups, cultures, and
institutions.
Different
cultures have different conventions about how to make music. But within any
culture, each musical performer makes music that both fits those conventions
(and, thus, is old) and is unique, played according to the talent and style of
that performer (and, thus, is new). The same is true of language. We use the
term “grammar” for conventions about how to speak and write. Each time a person
uses language, that person does so in ways that fit the conventions (are
“grammatical”) and that, at the same time, are unique, expressing what that
person has to say and how they have chosen to say it. Like music, what we do
with language is always both old and new.
It is
pretty clear what it means to make music, but we use language to make meaning,
and it is not clear what that means. In the broadest sense, we make meaning by
using language to say things that, in actual contexts of use, amount, as well,
to doing things and being things. These things we do and are (identities) then
come to exist in the world and they, too, bring about other things in the
world. We use language to build things in the world and to engage in world
building. It is as if you could build a building by simply speaking words.
While we cannot build a building by simply speaking words, there are, indeed,
things we can build in the world by speaking words that accomplish actions and enact
identities.
Let’s
take a very simple example. An umpire in a baseball game says “Strike!” and a
“strike” exists in the game. That is what the rules of the game allow to
happen. It is a strike if the umpire says it is. Similarly, the rules of marriage
allow a marriage to actually happen in the world when a properly ordained
minister or a judge says “I now pronounce you man and wife.” Umpires actually
make strikes happen and ministers actually make marriages happen.
These
are what we can call “direct speech acts.” Saying something makes it so, as
long as one has said it in the right circumstances (so, “promise” is also a
direct speech act, since saying “I promise” in the right settings—e.g., not on a
stage as part of a play—makes a promise happen). But there are also things we
make happen in the world through language that do not actually require language, but
which are much easier to do with language than without it. I can most
certainly threaten you through gestures and behavior, but it is often easier to do it
in language.
We make or build things in the world through
language. Not just strikes,
marriages,
and threats, but many things. For example, I can make (or break) a relationship
with other people through language. If I talk to you in an informal,
bonding sort of way, I am “bidding” to have you accept me as a friend, someone
with whom you are comfortable. If you talk that way back to me, that sort of
relationship becomes “real” (at least for that time and place) and has
consequences in the world (e.g., it is now harder for you to turn down my
invitation for you to come to my house for dinner).
Whenever we speak or write, we always (often
simultaneously) construct
or
build seven things or seven areas of “reality.” Let’s call these seven things the “seven
building tasks” of language. In turn, since we use language to build these seven
things, a discourse analyst can ask seven different questions about any piece of
language-in-use. Below, I list the seven building tasks and the discourse
analysis question to which each gives rise:
1. Significance
There are things in life that are, by nearly
everyone’s standards, significant (for example the birth or death of a child).
But for many things, we need to use language to render them significant or to
lessen their significance, to signal to others how we view their significance. “Hornworms
sure vary a lot in how well they grow” signals that the speaker takes the
variation in the hornworms to be significant by the use of the adverb “sure.”
This is a marker of attitude or feeling.
“Hornworm growth exhibits a significant amount of
variation” signals that the speaker takes the variation in the hornworms to be
significant by the use of the phrase “significant amount of variation.” This
use of the word “significant” here is a technical term and refers to the statistical
tools of an academic discipline.
Discourse
Analysis Question: How is this piece of language being
used to make certain things significant or not and in what ways?
2. Practices
(Activities)
We have already talked a lot about practices. By a “practice”
I mean a socially recognized and institutionally or culturally supported
endeavor that usually involves sequencing or combining actions in certain
specified ways. Encouraging a student is an action, mentoring the student as
his or her advisor in a graduate program is a practice. Telling someone
something about linguistics is an action (informing), lecturing on linguistics
in a course is a practice. Sometimes the term “activity” is used for what I am
calling a practice.
We use language to get recognized as engaging in a
certain sort of practice or activity. For example, I talk and act in one way
and I am engaged in formally opening a committee meeting; I talk and act in
another way and I am engaged in “chit-chat” before the official start of the meeting.
When
we think about practices, we confront a significant “chicken and egg”sort of
question. What we say, do, and are in using language enacts practices. At the same
time, what we say, do, and are would have no meaning unless these practices already
existed.
Which
comes first then: A practice like committee meetings or the language we use to
carry out committee meetings, our committee ways of talking and interacting? Is
this a “committee meeting” because we are speaking and acting this way, or
are we speaking and acting this way because this is a committee meeting?
The practice of committee meetings gives meaning and purpose to our language in
the meetings and our language in the meetings enacts the committee meeting and makes
it exist.
The
answer to this chicken and egg question is this: Language and practices “boot
strap” each other into existence in a reciprocal process through time. We
cannot have one without the
other.
This
does, of course, raise the question of how new practices arise. Often new practices
are variants of old ones, ones people have changed or transformed. At other
times, new practices start by people borrowing elements of their other older practices
to make something new. That is why computer interfaces look like and are talked
about as “desktops.” We use something old to understand and build something
new.
Discourse Analysis Question: What practice (activity) or
practices (activities) is this piece of language being used to enact (i.e., get
others to recognize as going on)?
3. Identities
We
use language to get recognized as taking on a certain identity or role, that
is, to build an identity here and now. For example, I talk and act in one way
and I am speaking and acting as “chair” of the committee; at the next moment I
speak and talk in a different way and I am speaking and acting as one
peer/colleague speaking to another. Even if I have an official appointment as
chair of the committee, I am not always taken as acting as the chair, even
during meetings. I have to enact this identity at the right times and places to
make it work.
We
often enact our identities by speaking or writing in such a way as to attribute
a certain identity to others, an identity that we explicitly or implicitly
compare or contrast to our own. We build identities for others as a way to
build ones for ourselves. For example, it is impossible to enact a racist
identity for oneself without building in speech or writing some sort of
inferior identity for people of another “race.”
Discourse Analysis Question: What identity or identities
is this piece of language being used to enact (i.e., get others to recognize as
operative)? What identity or identities is this piece of language attributing
to others and how does this help the speaker or writer enact his or her own
identity?
4. Relationships
We
use language to signal what sort of relationship we have, want to have, or are
trying to have with our listener(s), reader(s), or other people, groups, or institutions
about whom we are communicating. We use language to build social relationships.
For example, in a committee meeting, as chair of the committee, I say
“Prof. Smith, I’m very sorry to have to move us on to the next agenda item” and
signal a relatively formal and deferential relationship with Prof. Smith. On the
other hand, suppose I say, “Ed, it’s time to move on.” Now I signal a
relatively informal and less deferential relationship with the same person.
Discourse
Analysis Question: What sort of relationship or
relationships is this piece of language seeking to enact with others (present
or not)?
5. Politics
(the distribution of social goods)
We use language to convey a perspective on the
nature of the distribution of social goods, that is, to build a perspective on
social goods. For example, if I say “Microsoft loaded its operating system with
bugs,” I treat Microsoft as purposeful and responsible, perhaps even culpable.
I deny them a social good. If I say, on the other hand, “Microsoft’s operating
system is loaded with bugs,” I treat Microsoft as less purposeful and
responsible, less culpable. I am still denying them a social good, but I have
mitigated this denial. If I say, “Like all innovative pieces of software,
Microsoft’s operating system has bugs,” I grant Microsoft a social good (being
innovative) and even make the bugs a sign of this, rather than a problem. How I
phrase the matter has implications for social goods like guilt and blame, legal
responsibility or lack of it, or Microsoft’s bad or good motives.
Social goods are potentially at stake any time we
speak or write so as to state or imply that something or someone is “adequate,”
“normal,” “good,” or “acceptable” (or the opposite) in some fashion important
to some group in society or society as a whole. In Chapter 1, I defined
perspectives on the distribution of social goods as “politics.”