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The Materiality of Language: Gender, Politics, and the University
David Bleich sees the human body, its affective life, social life, and political functions as belonging to the study of language. In The Materiality of Language , Bleich addresses the need to end centuries of limiting access to language and its many contexts of use. To recognize language as material and treat it as such, argues Bleich, is to remove restrictions to language access due to historic patterns of academic censorship and unfair gender practices. Language is understood as a key path in the formation of all social and political relations, and becomes available for study by all speakers, who may regulate it, change it, and make it flexible like other material things.
557 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2013
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October 27, 2016
David Bleich is a researcher at the University of Rochester. His field of studies is language and literature in society. Few years ago, he published his book The Materiality of Language: Gender, Politics, and the University (Indiana, 2013), in which he analyzes the social implications of language and how the institutions have avoided, obfuscated, submerged and repressed the subject of language.
Since it’s an extensive work, my review will focus only in Part 1 Chapter 3 “Materiality and Genre”.
One of the main concerns of Bleich is that modern academy hasn´t recognized the value of a materialist sense of language.
According to the Oxford Dictionary materiality has different meanings: “The quality of being composed of matter” and “The quality of being composed of matter”. For Bleich, language matters because it participates in social and political relations.
Language is not only a tool for spreading knowledge, is a subject worthy of study. As Bleich sees, language is a contested subject, a subject in struggle due to the censorship of white male elite.
Bleich’s theory is inspired in nominalism and Wittgenstein’s theory of language. Nominalism denies the existence of universals and abstract objects. But this view has been suppressed by religious and academic institutions that don't want to lose their power. Genres are categories that identify something as a member of a class. However, genres are created by collective agreement. Even if the name remains the same through time, genres are not stable. On the other hand, Wittgenstein sees language as a way to referring to the world. That’s why McGinn considers his efforts as a reorientation away from abstracts and generalization towards the attention to the concrete practice of language. Thanks to this one can understand why Bleich takes Wittgenstein’s ideas to study language in use in opposition to abstracting it from its context. Four are the concepts that Bleich studies from Wittgenstein: Sprachspiel, the form of life, the family resemblance, and the substitution of description for explanation.
In what differs Bleich’s approximation to language from Linguistics and Philosophy? In the social basis of language through the analysis of the implication of gender in its practices. Since white-male perspective regulated the norm and uses of language, the studies didn’t care about the personal practices of it. One example of this is how mothers have raised their children through ages even though most of them lacked studies. By sharing their language, mothers have ordered the world and with it the affective, social and political life of generations. Language matters in a political and social way, it provides identity and a sense of community. But the elite of men hasn't been conscious about it.
However, Bleich is not so radical. He doesn’t claim the death of the heteropatriarchy; his aim is to reconsider how we valid or discriminate language practices of others. Who is an authority? What gives the access to knowledge? Gender has structured power and the access to education. For Bleich, all speakers, it doesn’t matter their origin or gender, may regulate, change and use language as they want to. In a few words, every practice is valuable.
In a moment where discrimination is a constant, this alternative theory helps us to understand why the language of others should matter to all of us. Bleich's proposal invites us to reconsider the political implications of language practices.
Bleich’s writing is accessible, even if the topic is dense, he explains it in a clear way. To all the interested in language and gender studies, this book is a must.
Since it’s an extensive work, my review will focus only in Part 1 Chapter 3 “Materiality and Genre”.
One of the main concerns of Bleich is that modern academy hasn´t recognized the value of a materialist sense of language.
According to the Oxford Dictionary materiality has different meanings: “The quality of being composed of matter” and “The quality of being composed of matter”. For Bleich, language matters because it participates in social and political relations.
Language is not only a tool for spreading knowledge, is a subject worthy of study. As Bleich sees, language is a contested subject, a subject in struggle due to the censorship of white male elite.
Bleich’s theory is inspired in nominalism and Wittgenstein’s theory of language. Nominalism denies the existence of universals and abstract objects. But this view has been suppressed by religious and academic institutions that don't want to lose their power. Genres are categories that identify something as a member of a class. However, genres are created by collective agreement. Even if the name remains the same through time, genres are not stable. On the other hand, Wittgenstein sees language as a way to referring to the world. That’s why McGinn considers his efforts as a reorientation away from abstracts and generalization towards the attention to the concrete practice of language. Thanks to this one can understand why Bleich takes Wittgenstein’s ideas to study language in use in opposition to abstracting it from its context. Four are the concepts that Bleich studies from Wittgenstein: Sprachspiel, the form of life, the family resemblance, and the substitution of description for explanation.
In what differs Bleich’s approximation to language from Linguistics and Philosophy? In the social basis of language through the analysis of the implication of gender in its practices. Since white-male perspective regulated the norm and uses of language, the studies didn’t care about the personal practices of it. One example of this is how mothers have raised their children through ages even though most of them lacked studies. By sharing their language, mothers have ordered the world and with it the affective, social and political life of generations. Language matters in a political and social way, it provides identity and a sense of community. But the elite of men hasn't been conscious about it.
However, Bleich is not so radical. He doesn’t claim the death of the heteropatriarchy; his aim is to reconsider how we valid or discriminate language practices of others. Who is an authority? What gives the access to knowledge? Gender has structured power and the access to education. For Bleich, all speakers, it doesn’t matter their origin or gender, may regulate, change and use language as they want to. In a few words, every practice is valuable.
In a moment where discrimination is a constant, this alternative theory helps us to understand why the language of others should matter to all of us. Bleich's proposal invites us to reconsider the political implications of language practices.
Bleich’s writing is accessible, even if the topic is dense, he explains it in a clear way. To all the interested in language and gender studies, this book is a must.
October 26, 2016
The provocative study of David Bleich analyzes the limited access to language over the centuries, characterizing and investigating its degrees of political involvement, the sacralization of Latin, the academic feedback, and the gender oriented research, to declare the ultimate material entity of language.
Despite the essential role of language in all societies, linguistic oriented research as a subject of university studies has been avoided and discredited by Western academic institutions, mainly because of the broadness of the topic. It is true that the multidisciplinary nature of linguistic studies together with its essential connection with the human development and the communicative purposes have shaped, in the course of time, its unique features often at the center of theoretical debates. Bleich’s ambitious intention to understand the controversial nature of language studies was animated by another interesting point investigated in his work: (from the perspective of gender)the gender marked point of view. In this field, theories and statements have been made mostly by men – a fact that shows an inequitable lack of female authority in the area of interest – and only in the middle of twentieth century thinkers as Foucault, Delouse and Silverman started to investigate the historic limitation of language, relating it to the Saussure's concept of langue and parole, a dichotomy reinterpreted from the prospective of Marxism. Starting from the ruins and the chaos of this complex multidisciplinary scenario, Bleich critiques the male-dominated academic approach to language studies investigating and offering all the intriguing views of historical developments in language philosophies which explain the current state of affairs; then, he progressively builds the essential need for a less abstract and more material recognition of language, encouraging academics to facilitate the mundial access to language.
His statement about the close relation between the materiality of language and politics seems to be very uncompromising and justified in a simplistic way with the fact that “merely to use language is to partecipate in social and political relations”. This statement contradicts the practical concept of uses of language expressed in the first chapter, which moves away from the Platonic tradition and considers every locus language as important as any other, arranging every subject matter in a interdependent relation with the fundamental use of language for a universal human progress.
According to my reading, the relevance of language theorized as a material entity and the analysis of the gender gap in a social and historical interpretation are the key points of Bleich’s study. This is a very enjoyable and accessible book that captivated my attention throughout. As a professor of t of English in the University of Rochester, Bleich stated in the acknowledgements of his book that the interest of his students in language theory greatly motivated his research and prompted his accessible style. While the author attempts to explain the need to treat language as a cognitive phenomenon and theorize it as a material entity, his narration and speculation succeed in being fluid and sometimes funny, perfectly in line with his materiality concept for universal accessibility to knowledge.
Despite the essential role of language in all societies, linguistic oriented research as a subject of university studies has been avoided and discredited by Western academic institutions, mainly because of the broadness of the topic. It is true that the multidisciplinary nature of linguistic studies together with its essential connection with the human development and the communicative purposes have shaped, in the course of time, its unique features often at the center of theoretical debates. Bleich’s ambitious intention to understand the controversial nature of language studies was animated by another interesting point investigated in his work: (from the perspective of gender)the gender marked point of view. In this field, theories and statements have been made mostly by men – a fact that shows an inequitable lack of female authority in the area of interest – and only in the middle of twentieth century thinkers as Foucault, Delouse and Silverman started to investigate the historic limitation of language, relating it to the Saussure's concept of langue and parole, a dichotomy reinterpreted from the prospective of Marxism. Starting from the ruins and the chaos of this complex multidisciplinary scenario, Bleich critiques the male-dominated academic approach to language studies investigating and offering all the intriguing views of historical developments in language philosophies which explain the current state of affairs; then, he progressively builds the essential need for a less abstract and more material recognition of language, encouraging academics to facilitate the mundial access to language.
His statement about the close relation between the materiality of language and politics seems to be very uncompromising and justified in a simplistic way with the fact that “merely to use language is to partecipate in social and political relations”. This statement contradicts the practical concept of uses of language expressed in the first chapter, which moves away from the Platonic tradition and considers every locus language as important as any other, arranging every subject matter in a interdependent relation with the fundamental use of language for a universal human progress.
According to my reading, the relevance of language theorized as a material entity and the analysis of the gender gap in a social and historical interpretation are the key points of Bleich’s study. This is a very enjoyable and accessible book that captivated my attention throughout. As a professor of t of English in the University of Rochester, Bleich stated in the acknowledgements of his book that the interest of his students in language theory greatly motivated his research and prompted his accessible style. While the author attempts to explain the need to treat language as a cognitive phenomenon and theorize it as a material entity, his narration and speculation succeed in being fluid and sometimes funny, perfectly in line with his materiality concept for universal accessibility to knowledge.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews