Theoretical references and tools
This blog is a space to reflect on the relationship between the direction we think towards and the concepts we create to get there… and also on how concepts, once created, condition the way we think.
That is why, as a result of Little Red Riding Hood’s questions, the need will arise to analyse concepts with tools that we will detail and cite as they appear, along with the many thinkers without whom women would have nothing of what we now take for granted.
Some theoretical frameworks from language pragmatics and knowledge theory will be recurrent. The need for such tools will arise from the Red Riding Hood dialogues, but let us outline them here for those who want to know from the outset the academic frameworks that will helpanalyse words and discourse.
Language is action, and also intention.
From Speech Act Theory, the theory of speech acts developed by Austin and Searle, we will assume that language is action – verbal, but action – Speech acts have intentions and consequences, conscious and/or unconscious.
Language is perspective
We will also assume, in line with cognitive-functional theoretical frameworks, that language is perspectival. Concepts do not name what things are but rather what a human perspective has found interesting about them. But absolute relativism should not follow from this. Just as science has developed methodologies that allow us to validate knowledge, we must be able to apply criteria of coherence, relevance and responsibility to definitions that allow us to have a common language.
Language is subject to coherence between function and form
In this sense, the systemic functional linguistics of MAK Halliday — and many analysts who have worked in the same direction (Hassan, Martin, Rose, etc.) — is based on the coherence between the social function of any language text and the chosen linguistic forms: if I know what the text wants to do, I can deduce the forms (lexicon, structures) that I will find in it. And vice versa: from the linguistic forms that we use in a text, we can infer the social function that we want it to fulfill. This approach is interesting when we pursue language accountability. If, for example, I say, “it is unacceptable that he walked out,” I cannot pretend that I was simply narrating that he left, because from the moment I use the word “unacceptable,” I am judging.
Language is language in use
Given that we are experiencing a time when words are used with different and even opposing meanings, and with rapid changes in use, we will have to examine not only dictionary definitions, but above all examples of how they are being used.
We define for the purposes of something.
We always define for the purposes of something or to some effect. When new words appear it is always because at that moment a community needs to mark either the similarity or the difference of something with respect to other already defined concepts. Concepts reinforce each other in these assimilation/differentiation schemes. And once a conceptual framework is created, we unwittingly see the world through it. Each word presupposes and implies others, creating frameworks, as linguists have established (George Lakoff in Don’t Think of an Elephant, for example). We will need to know them in order to understand how a debate is framed.
Thus, for each new word and each movement of meaning, some human gaze has had the intention to assimilate or to distinguish something. And some power of recognition has made it possible for language to encapsulate that outlook in a word.
Two ways to validate definition
And so we come to ask how definitions are validated. The theoretical framework LCT (Legitimation Code Theory) established by Karl Maton offers us a first basic distinction reagarding the way knowledge is validated. This distinction is announced in the title of Maton’s seminalwork: Knowledge and Knowers. It breaks down the way knowledge can be legitimized in two basic types of criteria:
- Knowledge Code: when knowledge content is accompanied by its own criteria, verifiable by third parties, to validate that knowledge. The knowledge proposition or discipline includes the methodology by which it is legitimized. An example would be mathematics.
- Knower Code: the validity of a word, a concept, or a piece of knowledge is not granted by the ability to establish conclusions and links of coherence with any other concepts that such knowledge carries withit and with previously established concepts. Legitimation comes from the social authority enjoyed by the voices issuing or supporting that content.
Broadly speaking, in contemporary feminism we find many postmodern theories that focus on validating the concepts and knowledge proposed by oppressed groups. Their legitimation as knowledge arises precisely from the fact that such knowledge comes from previously silenced voices. These theories challenge the pretensions to universal knowledge that Enlightened modernity pursued. They delegitimise classical feminism on the grounds that it is anchored in the Enlightenment concepts of a universally shared rationality and a stable subject.
Hence there are very profound differences. These theories do not only handle different definitions but also conflicting sources of validation. They obtain their legitimation from antagonistic codes. This sheds some light on why we are not dealing with a matter of nuances but rather with two currents of knowledge that, in application of their own theory and principles, cannot validate the other as feminism. Every time that two different demonstrations commemorate March 8, as is the case in many Spanish cities, women get accused of failing to compromise for unity. But what is actually at play is a huge clash of paradigms that, far from affecting just feminism, will probably underlie thinking and polititics all throughout the 21st century.
Irreconcilable theories or complementary theories?
Will the path for women lie in findingways for these two paradigms and legitimation codes to work as complementary? Or is it necessary to take sides on one of these paths, recognizing it as the most instrumental towards equality? Or may we need to find new names for agendas and movements that we may have to assume as different? To reflect on these questions, we will have to address not only who is defining, how, for what and for whom, but also the grounds on which these definitions are legitimized.
Two traditions of semantic categorization
And in order to do that we will need to refer to how we create and analyse categories and generics. Right now, in our everyday use of language in the political arena, two main frameworks are coexisting, giving rise to fallacies, definitional perplexity, cognitive schisms and a lot of talking at cross-purposes. A chaos only the word “man” seems to escape, surprisingly. Or not.
Those two categorization frameworks are:
In strict Aristotelian semantic frameworks, categorization is based on criteria and attributes; the categories are closed, and all elements present all the characteristics of the category.
Frameworks such as Eleanor Rosch’s prototype semantics, or Piaget’s schema and example models, allow concepts to be represented as networks with liminal or transition zones. Categories defined in this way are compatible the kind of metonymical and metaphorical meaning that shifts that Lakoff and other linguists analyse.
Assuming that we always define for the purposes of something and that, as functionalists claim, a category makes sense as long as it is coherent with what it aims to analyze, it would follow that both forms of categorization can be useful depending on what the human gaze needs to focus on.
What is not useful is not knowing in what sense or for what purpose something is being defined. And many times we lack tools to understand how we are defining. Pragmatics and discourse analysis are not usually taught in compulsory education. At least not in Spain. And in many disciplines, there have been linguistic changes and shifts of tremendous significance, with scholars not always having tools to analyse the definitions being imported from other disciplines. A feminist emerging from psychoanalysis and another emerging from political philosophy are unlikely to use the word gender or feminism in the same way. To find out whether they are handling compatible definitions of a word we need to address implicit meanings and presuppositions with linguistic tools that have not always been available to scholars who specialize in their fields.
To conceptualize is to politicize
This sentence was held as a motto by Spanish philosopher Celia Amorós, and it is a constant reference in this blog. Good policies cannot happen without good concepts. Regardless of theoretical approaches, her constantly challenging the abstractions we use for coherence and relevance, and her conviction that thinking is always thinking for a purpose, are always a beacon in search of clarity.