Structured Visions

How is language like water? Both are all around us. Both are within us. Both have fascinating structuring mechanisms that we may not know much about.

Think about the structure of a water molecule. Its single oxygen atom has a slightly negative charge, and the two hydrogen atoms have a slightly positive charge. The opposite charges attract water molecules to each other (the positive side of one molecule is drawn to the negative side of another). These weak attractive forces are called ‘hydrogen bonds’, and they make it possible for water to remain a liquid at room temperature, which in turn allows life to exist on Earth.

In this episode we explore the possibility that human language has a structuring quality, like the structuring mechanisms in the natural world. If the qualities of water are shaped by hydrogen bonds, what shapes the structure of human language?

I believe that the structuring principle of human language is selfhood.

We’re getting better at recognising the oppressive structures of our society, like structural racism, patriarchal systems, colonialism, cisheteronormativity, neurotypicality and ableism (to name a few).

But we might also take some time to acknowledge a more dynamic structuring principle: the self. Formed and re-formed by language, it dissolves and is produced anew in each moment. The self shapes itself like a membrane around spaces from which new experiences can emerge.

The challenge is to recognise the power of the dynamic structure of the self formed by language. The mission is to honour it, in ourselves and each other.

Curious about how linguists can find out what pre-verbal babies know about linguistic structure? Watch this great video on The Ling Space.

The story I discuss in this episode, ‘No and the ark’ is available on my Grammar for Dreamers blog: grammarfordreamers.wordpress.com

Check out my free course, Writing through the Lens of Language, designed especially for you.

Follow me on Instagram @grammarfordreamers, Facebook www.facebook.com/Grammarfordreamers/ or Twitter @jodieclarkling

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Have you ever entertained an apocalypse fantasy? The one I invented relieves humanity of its language.

Language produces selves, which is not a bad thing. It’s a beautiful thing. It’s the window to intimacy.

But what happens when the amount of language we use increases to the extent that we’ve seen in recent years?

The production of selves increases to potentially catastrophic proportions.

Here’s the link to Dr Debbie Reese’s excellent critique of Scott O’Dell’s Island of the Blue Dolphins: https://americanindiansinchildrensliterature.blogspot.com/2016/06/a-critical-look-at-odells-island-of.html

The book that inspired my fascination with mycelium is Paul Stamets’s Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Save the World.

The stories I discuss in this episode, ‘Finite’ and ‘A remarkable outcome’, are both available on my Grammar for Dreamers blog: grammarfordreamers.wordpress.com

Check out my free course, Writing through the Lens of Language, designed especially for you.

Follow me on Instagram @grammarfordreamers, Facebook www.facebook.com/Grammarfordreamers/ or Twitter @jodieclarkling

Subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify or wherever you like to listen. Rate, review, tell your friends!

Ferdinand de Saussure likened language to a collective treasure that every member of the linguistic community can draw from without its stores diminishing. This idea is quite heartening – almost magical – but it’s also ruthlessly oppressive. What do you want first: the good news or the bad news?

The story I discuss in this episode is ‘A day at the lake’.

Check out my free course, Writing through the Lens of Language, designed especially for you.

Follow me on Instagram @grammarfordreamers, Facebook www.facebook.com/Grammarfordreamers/ or Twitter @jodieclarkling

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Happy New Year! The end of the year is a great time for reflection. Why not reflect upon the meaning of life?

Or, even better, why not reflect on why we would think there is a meaning to life, and what type of meaning we expect to find (meaning itself has lots of meanings, as linguist John Lyons points out), and what we’re assuming about life when we ask what it means.

Are we asking about the meaning of human life only? If so, are we thinking of human life in terms of a narrative, so the ‘meaning of life’ becomes something like the ‘moral of the story’?

What if we thought about meaning of life from a biological perspective?

David Deamer, a biologist who explores the origin of life, gives this definition: ‘Life is an evolving system of polymers synthesized by chemical reactions (metabolism) that take place in membrane-bounded compartments called cells’ (2011, p. 3).

The image we have here is not one life, with one story and one meaning. Instead it’s a proliferation of discrete compartments – cells, surrounded by membranes, each containing its own unique strand of genetic information – in other words, strands of communicable meanings.

If you’ve been listening to this podcast, you know I’m fascinated by the idea that the information contained in these membrane-bound compartments… indeed, that the membranes themselves, are a form of language.

This perspective would present human language as nothing more or less than a means for the Earth to produce new forms of membrane-bound compartments, with new forms of information within.

Human language creates the self, which serves as a membrane, that requires us to feel separate, divided, broken.

But it also offers us the experience uniqueness, individuality and the rare pleasure of co-creating something new, something meaningful, something that reconnects us to everything we once felt separate from.

Here’s a New Year’s resolution: rather than spending time trying to find out the meaning of life, let’s celebrate how we each individually contribute to life’s multitude of meanings.

The story I discuss in this episode is ‘The Mosaic Makers’.

Works cited

Deamer, D. (2011) First life: discovering the connections between stars, cells, and how life began. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Lessing, D. (1979). Shikasta. New York: Knopf.

Lyons, J. (1977). Semantics, vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Thanks to the curious, intelligent, creative community who listen to this podcast. I have exciting new things in store for you. Stay tuned to future episodes to find out more.

Subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify or wherever you like to listen. Rate, review, tell your friends!

Or connect with me in one or more of the following ways:

Subscribe to the monthly Grammar for Dreamers newsletter (and get a copy of the Grammar for Dreamers screenplay).

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‘It’s easy to forget,’ said Sir David Attenborough in his address to COP26, ‘that ultimately the emergency climate comes down to a single number — the concentration of carbon in our atmosphere.’ That one number, he goes on to say, ‘defines our relationship with our world.’

According to Attenborough’s framing, the story is a mathematical problem, with a mathematical solution. But how often, in your experience, are relationship problems genuinely reducible to mathematical equations? How often are they genuinely ‘solved’ by a number?

I’ve often said that my creative and academic work are inspired by ‘the intimacy embedded in the structure of language.’ Intimacy requires selves, and selves are generated by language, by the stories we tell. Stories about the environmental crisis usually construct two distinct selves: us and the Earth.

In this episode we recognise that the relationship between us and the Earth would benefit from some couples therapy. In therapy it might be revealed that the thing that separates us from the Earth is language – the capacity to create and inhabit other worlds – fantasy, parallel existences – that keep us from putting any attention to our partner, the Earth. Language is a boundary that keeps the human species detached from the Earth.

But the thing that separates us does not have to be a boundary. It could be a membrane. Language may be unique to humans, but membranes are universal to all forms of life. Let’s explore the possibility that language is Earth’s newest form of membrane, one that creates spaces from which new ideas can emerge.

The story I discuss in this episode is ‘The Great Reversal.’

Many thanks to Dr Samantha Kies-Ryan for her work on storytelling and water management in the Solomon Islands.

For additional content:

Subscribe to the monthly Grammar for Dreamers newsletter (and get a copy of the Grammar for Dreamers screenplay).

To watch my regularly posted videos of linguistic geekery, follow me on Instagram @grammarfordreamers or on Facebook: www.facebook.com/Grammarfordreamers/

Are you enjoying these episodes? Would you like to hear more? Subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify or wherever you like to listen.

In this episode we’re going to address three questions. What’s a word? What did it feel like when life first emerged on the Earth? When’s the first (or the last) time you made a real decision? And I’m going to try to convince you that these questions all have something to do with each other.

I believe that thinking about words will give us a bit of insight about what it was like when life first emerged on the Earth. These two things – life and language – for me share two qualities: that they’re both incredibly commonplace, and they’re both overwhelmingly mysterious.

Also, both require boundary making, whether that takes the form of a cell membrane (life) or a self membrane (language). These boundaries cultivate a space in which new ideas can land.

For more about membranes and the origins of life, read Pier Luigi Luisi’s The emergence of life or David Deamer’s First life.

Read my story ‘Wordfall’ on my Grammar for Dreamers blog.

For additional content:

Subscribe to the monthly Grammar for Dreamers newsletter (and get a copy of the Grammar for Dreamers screenplay).

To watch my regularly posted videos of linguistic geekery, follow me on Instagram @grammarfordreamers or on Facebook: www.facebook.com/Grammarfordreamers/

Are you enjoying these episodes? Would you like to hear more? Subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify or wherever you like to listen.

When did you learn that the earth travels round the sun and not the other way round? And when you talk to yourself, which one of the dialoguing characters is you? Language generates multiple selves, and each self comes with its own built in worldview. Is it superstitious to think of selves that are wiser than us, that are protective, that wish to bless us? Perhaps it’s reckless not to.

The story I discuss in this episode is called ‘Go’. It’s just been published in the Running Wild Anthology of Stories, vol 5.

I learned about imperatives in Omotic languages from reading work by Alexandra Aikhenvald. (See reference list below.)

And the discussion of postmodernism is based on the following quote from Madan Sarup’s book, Identity, culture and the postmodern world:

‘Copernicus, Darwin, Marx and Freud have all, in their different ways, decentred the human subject. By “decentering”, I mean that individual consciousness can no longer be seen as the origin of meaning, knowledge and action.’ (Sarup, 1996, p. 46)

References

Aikhenvald, A. (2010). Imperatives and commands. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Sarup, M. (1996). Identity, culture and the postmodern world. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

For additional content:

Subscribe to the monthly Grammar for Dreamers newsletter (and get a copy of the Grammar for Dreamers screenplay).

To watch my regularly posted videos of linguistic geekery, follow me on Instagram @grammarfordreamers or on Facebook: www.facebook.com/Grammarfordreamers/

Are you enjoying these episodes? Would you like to hear more? Subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Google podcasts, or wherever you like to listen.

Is an enlightened society a society without language? This episode explores what starlings can teach us about selves, the space that surrounds the experience of being, and how to create a more welcoming world.

The story I discuss in this episode is called ‘The end of language’.

The hack I mention for finding the subject and verb of a clause is called the question-tag probe. Here’s a video on how to use it to find the subject, and here’s one on how to find the verb.

Have you ever seen a starling murmuration? Watch this video from the RSPB, and be prepared to be amazed (or even, enlightened).

For additional content:

Subscribe to the monthly Grammar for Dreamers newsletter (and get a copy of the Grammar for Dreamers screenplay).

To watch my regularly posted videos of linguistic geekery, follow me on Instagram @grammarfordreamers or on Facebook: www.facebook.com/Grammarfordreamers/

Are you enjoying these episodes? Would you like to hear more? Subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Google podcasts, or wherever you like to listen.

Have you ever repeated a word over and over again to yourself to experience the dissolution of its meaning? What if you were to do that with the word ‘me’? When I was a little kid, repeating the word ‘me’ became a doorway to a world where I was freed from the self that language had created. It was trippy.

In this episode we’ll discuss the role of language in creating, dissolving and protecting selves.

In my academic research I analyse transcripts of conversations to identify the shape of the social structures that emerges from people talking about everyday experiences. I look for grammatical patterns, asking these questions:

• What ‘selves’ are constructed here?
• What is the shape of the social structure here?
• What are the possibilities for transformation here?*

One transformative possibility that has emerged from this type of analysis is that selves need to be protected. Can language protect them?

Think about the work you own name does in constructing your social self. But an anthropological look at naming systems makes it clear that names are less about protecting selfhood, and more about establishing someone’s place in a social structure. Even the seemingly ordinary principle that there are girls’ names for girls and boys’ names for boys, for instance, lets us know that we live in a culture that positions us in a binary gender structure.

Having an established place in a social structure is not the same as knowing that your self is protected, revered, cherished. In my short story, ‘The Greenhouse’, I explore the idea that everything in the natural world has its own blueprint. – its chemical makeup, its DNA signature, etc. Everything in the natural world has something you could call a ‘name’. Or even a ‘self’.

The ‘selves’ are in relationship with each other – molecules combine to form new molecules, membranes form that allow life to emerge

What if the earth were to grant to one of its species the ability to play with these relationship-forming tools?

What if human beings were offered a device to do creativity in exactly the same way the earth does creativity?

Well so far, such a device has created social structures that produce division, hierarchy and exclusion. But there’s hope to be found in the etymology of the word ‘culture’.

Culture is what we cultivate.

Language is what we use to cultivate.

To make a more welcoming social structure, let’s cultivate selves that felt safe and protected, that are crucibles for creation. Let’s use language to form linguistic membranes around selves, create spaces for new experiences, feelings, thoughts and ideas to emerge.

*You can listen to me talk about this in more detail in Episode 58, which is a recording of the talk I gave at Sheffield Hallam University in 2017 in honour of Professor Sara Mills’s retirement. For an even more detailed version, have a look at my book, Selves, bodies and the grammar of social worlds.

Are you enjoying these episodes? Would you like to hear more? Subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Google podcasts, or wherever you like to listen.

For additional content:

Subscribe to the monthly Grammar for Dreamers newsletter (and get a copy of the Grammar for Dreamers screenplay).

Follow me on Instagram, where I regularly post videos sharing bits of linguistic geekery that delight me: @grammarfordreamers

In this episode we explore the idea that intimacy is embedded in the structure of language, and that this same intimacy is embedded in the structure of life.

We challenge the idea that languages are made of words, as does a character in my short story, ‘The words of your language’, which was published in issue 13 of After Happy Hour Review.

We play the ‘think of a word’ game, which shows up on pages 7-8 of my screenplay, Grammar for Dreamers.

We learn from Ed Yong’s article in The Atlantic about the role of membranes in the origin of life.

And we hear how Coyote tricked human beings into believing that language started with them, and that they’re the only ones who possess it in my fable called ‘Coyote’s trick’.

We ask this question, which comes from Grammar for Dreamers (p. 36):

‘What if language was not the endpoint of the earth’s evolution, but rather, its starting point? What if language was what the earth has always been doing?’

And finally, we explore the flipside of intimacy: hierarchy, domination, colonisation.

Are you enjoying these episodes? Would you like to hear more? Subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Google podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. For additional content, follow me on Instagram, where I regularly post videos sharing bits of linguistic geekery that delight me: @grammarfordreamers

Listen to Episode 64: The Intimacy Embedded in Language.