Taking a Language Stance

Abstract

Linguists tend to view language in terms of forms and their use. For historical reasons, speaking and listening are often ascribed to knowledge of a language system. Language behavior is seen as the production and processing of forms. Others contrast language to man-made codes (see Kravchenko, 2007 Kravchenko, A. 2007. Essential properties of language, or, why language is not a code. Language Sciences, 29(5): 650–621. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Love, 2004 Love, N. 2004. Cognition and the language myth. Language Sciences, 26(6): 525–544. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Instead of focusing on forms, language can be conceived of as action and, as such, both dynamic and symbolic (Rączaszek-Leonardi, 2009 Rączaszek-Leonardi, J. 2009. Symbols as constraints: The structuring role of dynamics and self-organization in natural language. Pragmatics & Cognition, 17(3): 653–676. [Google Scholar]). History places us in a meshwork where public resources of language, among other things, contribute to games, mashing beans, and watching television. Speaking-while-hearing draws on cultural products (e.g., axes, social roles, pictures, and wordings). As we collaborate, we orient to wordings or repeated (and systematized) aspects of vocalizations that, within our community, carry historically derived information. Pursuing this view, it is argued that hearing “words” is like seeing “things” in pictures. This is described as taking a language stance. To defend the position, it is argued that, first, we learn to hear wordings and, later, to use “what we hear” as ways of constraining our actions. Far from depending on individual knowledge, orienting to wordings makes language irreducibly collective.

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