Our Being Linguistic

Our Being Linguistic

Ignacio G. Ver

Since we are a conversation

And can hear one another

Friedrich Holderlin

Hans-Georg Gadamer (2001, 39) cites the above excerpt from Holderlin to help him sum up the linguistic turn of his thinking. Similarly, this essay intends to arrive at how it is that our being linguistic sums itself up in our being a conversation. What does it possibly mean that our being linguistic is our being a conversation? This essay gathers inspiration from experiences that manifest our being caught up in language or our being bound to language. A being caught up or a belonging to the experience of language that takes place, for instance, in a gathering where shared words and words recited in are themselves the bonding that happens or where words that travel long distances not only remind us of what it means to be with each other but is itself one of the ways by which we actually are with one another. This also takes place where words beckon us to further speech or writing, where one cannot remain silent after hearing such words. It appears inexhaustible the way we, individually and collectively, undergo experiences of being caught up in language. It also appears that our being caught up in language manifests our intimacy with the reality that shows up in speaking, hearing and conversation, in writing and in reading. It is in this light that this essay poses the question of what we are about in speaking and in conversation, in writing and in reading, what is there to learn of who we are in our being linguistic?

Of Speech and Conversation

In speaking a language, in saying something on something, is it the case that language is a tool we use? We may have this impression given how we may think that we have to master a language (as one masters a tool) in order to express oneself, in order to say what one means. But do we master a language? What happens as we go about speaking or as we learn to speak a language?

Gadamer (1977, 62) cautions us that language is never simply an instrument that we make use of as we need to and that we lay aside as we don't need to. As with any use of an instrument, the user occupies a central place, given the user's needs and purposes and given how the user actually manipulates what is used to serve its needs and purposes. As Gadamer (Ibid.) himself words it:

We never find ourselves as consciousness over against the world and, as it were, grasp

after a tool of understanding in a wordless condition. Rather, in all our knowledge of ourselves and in all our knowledge of the world, we are always already encompassed by the language that is our own.

If language, our speaking and wording, is an instrument used for some end, then this assumes that we recognize a state of affairs prior to this speaking and wording, just as we recognize an unscrewed bolt or an unhinged door prior to our utilizing instruments to set them working. But there is no way of recognizing any situation apart from our speaking about it, apart from the way we wordedly deal with it. While an infant does not yet speak a language in the way that someone elder does, does it follow that the infant's dealing with toys, for instance, is not in any way linguistic? Or would it be more appropriate to speak of the infant as already involved in the process of being linguistic?

Rather than standing apart from or being exempt from language, experience is bound to language, to being spoken of, to being worded. "Seeking and finding words to express it belongs to the experience itself (Gadamer, 1992, 417)." Experiencing something comes to some fulfillment as we find the wording that determines it, the wording about which we can argue and consent to. Do we not have experiences that testify to how arriving at the right word is establishing ourselves as experiencing or as having experienced. And this also goes for experiences that we consider strange or ineffable. There is a wording that belongs to the experience itself. There is no unworded thinking. Or, there is no thinking that does not lean toward or be disposed to being worded, spoken and heard. Thinking is a wording. The expanse of thinking, of thinking about is also the expanse of language, of being worded. All thinking is drawn into the play of language. There is no freedom to make use of or not to make use of language. Being linguistic is not at our disposal, as tools and instruments are.

Furthermore, unlike a tool, language is not what it is apart from its use, apart from its saying or apart from the said. "The real being of language is that into which we are taken up when we hear it - what is said (Gadamer 1977, 65)." As we freely speak and discuss, our manner of speaking, and whatever rules or forms we speak by all stand in service of disclosing what is said. Only when speech is inhibited, as in the violent interrogation of a caught spy or because of some hidden agenda or some image being protected in the face of those spoken to, do we take extra effort to become aware of how we speak or how we think we should speak for achieving certain desired ends. Just as there is no understanding of things apart from language, so also is there no understanding of language apart from things said. What would there be left to speak of or about language apart from what comes to be said in language?

Moreover, in our experiences of speaking and hearing what is spoken, it is not we, the hearers and speakers, who are the focus of the happening that is taking place. Rather, it is the coming into language of the said or what is made present in the speaking. Yes, there would be no said without one who says. Nevertheless, my chosen action in the wording of the said appears to be more the action of the thing said upon me than my own action upon things. This will once more appear as we move from speech to conversation. To speak is also to speak to someone or at least for someone, anyone who can hear. If my speaking cannot do that then there is something amiss with my speech.

Rather than speaking of conducting a conversation, Gadamer (1992, 367) refers to a conversation in terms of the interlocutors allowing themselves to be conducted by the subject matter that comes to stand through the course of the conversation. Looking at the way a conversation unfolds, of words solicited from what had just been said, of the twists and turns a conversation takes in reaching its conclusion, the partners conversing appear far less the leaders than the those who