The Language Impact - Evolution -- System -- Discourse - Alwin Frank Fill
8. Linguistic Constructivism
The Language Impact - Evolution -- System -- Discourse - Alwin Frank Fill
Alwin Frank Fill [+]
University of Graz
Description
Mirror and construction yard are two metaphors which Jonathan Potter (1996: 97) suggests for two contrasting views concerning the relation between language and the world. The mirror metaphor makes language into a passive echo of what happens in the world. The world along with everything that ‘is the case’ (Wittgenstein) moves on, changes and develops, but language merely follows suit and takes account of the occurrences and developments in the world. The construction yard metaphor, on the other hand, makes language into an active power which puts things together for us which previously were just fragments (Horace’s disiecta membra). It is this metaphor which expresses the ideas of linguistic constructivism, a school of thought represented among others by Michael Halliday and Christian Mathiessen, but also by some representatives of feminist linguistics.