Antony Fredriksson
University of Pardubice
Landscape of language: How our words originate in our environment
The main idea for Jakob Melöe is that our concepts originate in what we do: The fisherman’s concepts come from the practice of fishing and the reindeer herder’s concepts come from the action of herding. In this way words are related to a certain practice, but also to a certain place. The landscape that we call our home reverberates with our concepts, through our engagement with that environment. This way of thinking about concepts goes against the grain of mainstream cognitivist theories about how human language comes about. Melöe’s enactive approach, which he largely got from Wittgenstein, provides us with an understanding in which man and environment are not separated, but entwined in an inevitable relationality. By elaborating on this view and contrasting it with current anthropocentric theories of language acquisition, I want to articulate a holistic account in which human language is not separated, transcendent or external to the nonhuman realm, but rather an expression of our relationality. Tim Ingold emphasizes this when he notes that the word ‘text’ contains the original etymology from the Latin texere, meaning ‘to weave’. Through concepts we create our relations not only to, but also with the world.