English as a Resource in a Communicative Assemblage

Abstract

Ontology (i.e. thinking about what’s out there) is intimately connected to epistemology (i.e. questions such as, “how can we know what’s out there?”). Both are also connected to ideology (i.e. whose interests do those perspectives on ontology and epistemology serve?). The once dominant cognitivist and structuralist orientations on language and communication are increasingly challenged by new thinking about what is out there. This new thinking is in turn changing the way we engage in inquiry about language and communication. Among the many philosophical paradigms challenging cognitivism and structuralism, I present the set of theories espousing a flat ontology as facilitating a more inclusive and dynamic understanding of language in communication. Flat ontology questions binaries such as mind/body, cognition/matter, human/nonhuman, and verbal/nonverbal, with the former in each pair treated as agentive and more significant. It considers all resources as working together in the construction of meaning and activity. Flat ontology is adopted by philosophical schools such as posthumanism (Braidotti, 2013), new materialism (Barad, 2007), actor network theory (Latour, 2005), and spatiality (Massey, 2005). In this chapter, I will articulate how such schools provide a different orientation to the ontology of English, with new implications for meaning and communication, and for changes in the way we conduct language analysis and teaching in the future.

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