Can nonhumans speak?

Eugenia Demuro · Laura Gurney

11 citations0/0 files storedLinguistic Frontiers

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Posthumanist Ethics and Activism Semiotics and Representation Studies Geographies of human-animal interactions

Abstract

This paper mobilises posthumanism as a way to theorise and articulate what language(s)/languaging may be for nonhuman animals. This is investigated via various concepts brought together: we turn to the ontological turn in anthropology to expand on what language is, or might be, amongst humans, and then discuss Umwelt and languaging as two possible modes of exploring ontologies and biosemiosis among nonhumans. The dialogue between posthumanism and biosemiosis is so far absent in the field of critical language studies. The aim, thus, is to contribute to the nascent field of posthumanist applied linguistics by tentatively linking discrete fields of enquiry for a productive exchange across disciplines, and to further the discussion of how nonhuman language is (or may be) ontologised.

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References

2003Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter 1998Cosmological Deixis and Amerindian Perspectivism 2017Translanguaging as a Practical Theory of Language 2009The myth of language universals: Language diversity and its importance for cognitive science 1994Language Ideology 2018A Theoretical Framework for the Critical Posthumanities 2007Thinking Through Things 2017The Ontological Turn

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2024Artificial intelligence and the ethnographic encounter: Transhuman language ontologies, or what it means “to write like a human, think like a machine”2025Language ontologies and the worlding of language(s)/languaging: does language create the world or does worlding create language?

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