Structured Visions

When you were a kid, was there something that inspired wonder in you?

Is there anything that has inspired wonder for you more recently?

For me as a child it was something I read in a picture book: 'Colours are outside things. Feelings are inside things.' As an adult it was the idea that language evolves to produce forms that are more subjective, more personal, more enveloping. The word 'like' is a great example of that.

The evolution of grammar is a move toward more personhood—which is a way of creating the experience of a self, with an inside and an outside.

Maybe the self is one expression of the Earth's evolution, and language—specifically grammar—is the mechanism by which the self comes into being.

The story I read in this episode is 'The multidimensional language learners', and it's available on grammarfordreamers.com.

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What makes Ouija boards spooky? Is it language? After all, it's the letters of the alphabet that take up the most space on these devices, and they're just waiting for something to be spelled out.

Who's doing the spelling? And what kind of spells are they, after all?

In this episode we'll be exploring the occult etymologies of words like 'spell' and 'grammar'.

We also examine the spookiness of receiving messages that come without the coordinates of selfhood.

As Chinese philosopher Zhuang Zhou writes, 'The point of a fish trap is the fish. The point of the word is the idea. Once you've got the idea, you can forget the word.'

What if language is a net that shapes itself around an idea to bring it into a different plane of existence?

In this episode I share my own spooky idea: that human language is the Earth's way of creating nets of selfhood from which new ideas emerge.

The story I read is 'My late grandmother', and it's available on grammarfordreamers.com.

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Where's home?

What's your first language?

What was your language before your first language?

Join me to explore linguistic frames of reference in Guugu Yimithirr, polyglot newborns and the beauty and tyranny of language, self and home.

The story I read in this episode is 'Poor Magellan', and it's available on grammarfordreamers.com.

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How often have you prepared for a job interview by articulating your weaknesses? Apparently describing yourself as an empathic sponge who absorbs all the moods and emotions of the classroom is not the best self-promotional strategy when applying for an academic job.

In this episode we explore interviews as discursive practices that require us, as Michel Foucault might say, to become subjects.

I prefer the word 'self' to 'subject', and I like to think of language as forming the membrane that constitutes the self. An oppressive society requires a rigid membrane. A welcoming society respects the membrane, and honours the opportunities for intimacy inherent in the language-created notions of 'self' and 'other'.

The natural world provides illustrative examples of the types of symbiotic relationships that membranes offer. We even have, I was surprised to discover, a symbiotic relationship with viruses. Eight percent of the human genome has its origin in DNA from viruses. Our relationship and understanding of viruses can give us ideas about how to integrate those aspects of self and world that we'd prefer to keep distant.

The book I mention in this episode is Frank Ryan's Virolution.

The story I read in this episode is 'To meet you', and it's available on grammarfordreamers.com.

Connect with me (and sign up to my newsletter) here: grammarfordreamers.com/connect

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A question for the writers among us (writers of anything—novels, memoirs, short stories, theses, academic articles, monographs): What's your relationship with words?

Are you ringing in the New Year with a commitment to a daily, achievable word count target to ensure you achieve your writing goals by the end of 2023?

If so (and I hate to break this to you), you may be treating language like currency. And language will always resist that type of treatment. Despite your best intentions, one day soon the words may simply dry up, leaving you to face the blinking cursor of doom.

Rather than understanding language as divisible into quantifiable chunks (words), I think of language as fluid, a membrane in constant flux, forming and reforming around different imaginings of the self, the other, the world. When writers are in a flow state, I believe it's because they're allowing language to work its magic of shaping and reshaping selves.

Join me to discuss writer's block, life purpose and (why not?) The Sound of Music.

I mention two of my stories in this episode, 'The words of your language,' and 'Coming true', available on grammarfordreamers.com.

Connect with me (and sign up to my newsletter) here: grammarfordreamers.com/connect

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

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'What are your pronouns?'

How often do you get asked that question? How does it make you feel to be asked? When did the question first start making sense to you?

This episode explores the ways that pronoun usage has shifted over time to reflect new ways of thinking about the relationship between self and society. We'll draw upon Brown and Gilman's seminal essay, 'The pronouns of power and solidarity'. And we'll go back to Girl Scout camp in the early eighties, which is where my real education in pronouns began.

The story I read in this episode is 'Of prophets and pronouns', available on grammarfordreamers.com.

Take my free course, sign up for my newsletter, get my screenplay—do all the things, here: grammarfordreamers.com/connect

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Is nothing sacred?

What images or memories does this question conjure for you?

Also, what are your aims? (Don't answer that. This is not a self-help podcast.)

When I ask my undergraduate students to articulate the aims for their entrepreneurial projects, I hope and pray they won't ask me mine. Not because I don't have one. Here it is (don't tell anyone): To honour the sacred spaces where new ideas emerge.

The word 'sacred' sounds a little hokey or New Agey to my ears, but I can't think of a better word.

Episode 80 explores the sociological phenomenon of sacredness. We discuss the importance of the sacred and profane dichotomy in Durkheim's theory of religion. We draw upon Goffman to posit that uttering profanities might be part of a sacred ritual of drawing boundaries around self and other. And we explore the mysterious ways that language creates sacred spaces where new ideas emerge.

The story I read in this episode is 'The Determiners', available on grammarfordreamers.com.

Take my free course, sign up for my newsletter, get my screenplay—do all the things, here: grammarfordreamers.com/connect

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

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In this episode I share what I believe are my most radical ideas, which normally I try to hide so that people don't think I'm crazy:

• Human beings are the only living things that experience separation from the rest of the world.
• What separates us is human language.
• The experience of separation created by human language is a stage in the Earth's evolution, the Earth's next great experiment.
• And there are mysteries in the structure of language that can help us understand how the separation is shaped.

We'll talk about some of those mysteries, specifically the grammatical principle of possession.

To get a flavour of what's in store, hold up one of your hands in front of you so that you can see it. Ask yourself the question: 'Is this my hand?'

Did you entertain the possibility that your hand might be possessed? As we'll discover, it is possessed. The possessive determiner my tells us so.

Possession gives us a mechanism for creating two things where before there was only unity or wholeness. It allows us to divide absolutely anything up. And it allows us to redraw the boundaries around our experience.

With language—not just possessive forms in language, but with language in general—you have the capacity to shape a self... and to make decisions about what belongs to that self.

Language constructs selfhood, which gives us the experience of separation from the world. But what we learn by studying the intricacies of language is how malleable this selfhood is. The dynamic of selfhood can change literally with every utterance. And I believe that close attention to language can show us new ways of shaping the self, and thus, of shaping our communities and our world.

The story I read in this episode is 'Possessed', available on grammarfordreamers.com.

Take my free course, Writing through the Lens of Language, to explore the experiential aspects of 'inhabiting language' in more detail.

Come to my free live online workshop on October 21st! It's called 'The creative logic of language', and it's offered by Off the Shelf Festival of Words and Sheffield Hallam University.

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

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Have you ever been in love? And if you could send a message to outer space, what message would it be? We'll use these questions to guide us through an exploration of the evolution of language, music, intimacy and transformation.

The book I discuss in this episode is Steven Mithen's The singing Neanderthals: The origins of music, language, mind and body.

The story I read in this episode is 'Messages', available on grammarfordreamers.com.

Take my free course, Writing through the Lens of Language, to explore the experiential aspects of 'inhabiting language' in more detail.

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!

What propels you, what drives you, what directs you in your life? Is it inner guidance? Or is it some external power or sense of exterior obligation?

And, on a more light-hearted note, what's your favourite syllable?

In this episode we're exploring selves, bodies, phonology and phonetics, and Audre Lorde's essay, 'The erotic as power'.

We're playing with these ideas:

• Human language gives the human body the experience of existing separately from the rest of the natural world.
• Human language allows the human body to have a unique and specific experience of pleasure, joy, grief, loneliness—the whole range of human emotions.
• To inhabit language allows the body the pleasure of being embraced by a self.

The story I mention, 'Syllables', is available on grammarfordreamers.wordpress.com.

Take my free course, Writing through the Lens of Language, to explore the experiential aspects of 'inhabiting language' in more detail.

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!