{"id":68475,"date":"2023-06-19T17:51:11","date_gmt":"2023-06-19T21:51:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/world.edu\/?p=68475"},"modified":"2023-06-19T17:51:11","modified_gmt":"2023-06-19T21:51:11","slug":"language-isnt-alive-why-this-metaphor-can-be-misleading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/language-isnt-alive-why-this-metaphor-can-be-misleading\/","title":{"rendered":"Language isn\u2019t \u2018alive\u2019 \u2013 why this metaphor can be misleading"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cLiving<\/a>\u201d, \u201cevolving\u201d and \u201cdead<\/a>\u201d: we often talk about languages as if they were living organisms.<\/p>\n

The reason for this use of a metaphor to talk about language lies in the deep complexity of language as a concept. But treating language in this way can have drawbacks: it can lead us to misunderstand the relationship between language and society.<\/p>\n

The fundamental mechanism of metaphor is that it treats something as if it were something else. This typically happens with concepts that are complex or abstract, in order to pin them down to something we can understand more easily. We use metaphors to treat these concepts as if they were something more concrete, more tangible and that we are more familiar with.<\/p>\n

For example, if we talk about \u201cwasting\u201d or \u201csaving\u201d time, we treat time as if it were a commodity. Or, if we say that we\u2019re \u201cgoing through\u201d a difficult period, we\u2019re treating time as if it were space through which we move.<\/p>\n

Like time, language is one of these really complex concepts, and that\u2019s the reason why we often talk about it as if it were a living organism. In\u00a0a recent radio interview<\/a>, I myself said that languages are \u201calive\u201d. But there lurks a potential problem here.<\/p>\n

Metaphors are so much part of our every day discourse that we don\u2019t even notice them. For this reason, metaphors can be incredibly powerful.<\/p>\n

They are so entrenched that they actually determine our understanding of the concepts they refer to. The risk then is that metaphors may lead to understanding certain concepts in a fundamentally distorted way.<\/p>\n

Testing the metaphor<\/strong><\/h4>\n

I\u2019m going to put the \u201clanguage is alive\u201d metaphor to the test by considering two fundamental elements of life: birth and evolution.<\/p>\n

Birth is easily dealt with. Simply, languages don\u2019t have a point of departure, a beginning, that can be compared to the birth of a living being.<\/p>\n

Scholars often talk about the \u201cbirth<\/a>\u201d, the \u201croots<\/a>\u201d, or the \u201corigins<\/a>\u201d of a language, but these are not starting points.<\/p>\n

Rather they are historical periods during which a particular society acquires an identity for itself, and therefore a name, and that name begins to be used for the language they speak, too.<\/p>\n

One of the earliest records of the name English \u2013 Englisc \u2013 referring to both the people of England and their language dates back to the ninth century, in a text by\u00a0King Alfred<\/a>. But obviously this is not the moment when people began to speak this language \u2013 nor is there one.<\/p>\n

This is what\u00a0the language<\/a>\u00a0that King Alfred called \u201cEnglish\u201d looked like:<\/p>\n

\"\"

Alfred\u2019s letter to W\u00e6rferth. Bodleian Library MS. Hatton 20, fol. 1r. \u00a9 Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, CC BY-NC<\/p><\/div>\n

\u00d0a ic \u00f0a gemunde hu sio lar L\u00e6denge\u00f0iodes \u00e6r \u00f0issum afeallen w\u00e6s giond Angelcynn, & \u00f0eah monige cu\u00f0on Englisc gewrit ar\u00e6dan, \u00f0a ongan ic ongemang o\u00f0rum mislicum & manigfealdum bisgum \u00f0isses kynerices \u00f0a boc wendan on Englisc \u00f0e is genemned on L\u00e6den Pastoralis, & on Englisc Hierdeboc.<\/em><\/p>\n

(When I realised how the knowledge of Latin had decayed throughout England, and yet many could read English writing, I began, among other various and manifold troubles of this kingdom, to translate into English the book which is called in Latin Pastoralis, and in English Shepherd\u2019s Book.)<\/em><\/p>\n

English speakers today find it impossible to understand the meaning of this passage without specific knowledge of the language in which it is written.<\/p>\n

So, if this does not represent the \u201cbirth\u201d of English, could it be taken as evidence of how the language has \u201cevolved\u201d through the centuries?<\/p>\n

We could, but the problem is that it leads us to objectify languages. In other words, it leads us to think of King Alfred\u2019s language as if it was the same object as the language we speak now \u2013 just a very archaic form of it.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, it considers the English language (or any other language) as an autonomous entity, an independent being that simply exists in its own right.<\/p>\n

People, not language<\/strong><\/h4>\n

In reality, languages are integral to what we do as social animals. Societies change through migratory flows, invasions, technological advancement.<\/p>\n

And, as they do so, they also alter the ways in which they use language. Agency rests in the speakers of a language, not in the language itself.<\/p>\n

King Alfred\u2019s English did not become King Charles III\u2019s English as a consequence of language\u2019s own natural propensity to evolve. Language has no such propensity.<\/p>\n

Language does nothing. It isn\u2019t born, it doesn\u2019t grow, it doesn\u2019t evolve, it doesn\u2019t adapt to the changing environment. It is people who do all these things.<\/p>\n

\"\"

A silver penny of Alfred the Great. \u00a9 The Trustees of the British Museum, CC BY-NC-SA<\/p><\/div>\n

While the living organism metaphor can be a convenient cognitive shortcut, the misconception that it may cause is that the roles of people and languages are inverted. And this becomes a problem, for example, when we discuss language in relation to social justice and inequality.<\/p>\n

If we say that \u201cEnglish is taking over the planet<\/a>\u201d, we may be placing emphasis on the wrong aspect of the issue. It is not the language itself that is too powerful. The problem lies in the extreme imbalance of power and wealth in the world, a direct legacy of four centuries of colonialism.<\/p>\n

If we describe the history of languages like the growth of plants, we miss the point that the history of languages is inextricable from the history of societies and the often unequal relationships between them.<\/p>\n

Author Bio:<\/strong> Mario Saraceni is Associate Professor in English Language and Linguistics at the University of Portsmouth<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cLiving\u201d, \u201cevolving\u201d and \u201cdead\u201d: we often talk about languages as if they were living organisms. The reason for this use of a metaphor to talk about language lies in the deep complexity of language as a concept. But treating language in this way can have drawbacks: it can lead us to misunderstand the relationship between […]\n… learn more→<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[85],"tags":[8306],"coauthors":[11733],"class_list":["post-68475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-social-change","tag-language-3"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nLanguage isn\u2019t \u2018alive\u2019 \u2013 why this metaphor can be misleading - World leading higher education information and services<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/world.edu\/language-isnt-alive-why-this-metaphor-can-be-misleading\/\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Language isn\u2019t \u2018alive\u2019 \u2013 why this metaphor can be misleading - World leading higher education information and services\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u201cLiving\u201d, \u201cevolving\u201d and \u201cdead\u201d: we often talk about languages as if they were living organisms. 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