Over the holiday weekend, I chatted with my sister-in-law about a study her and her dog participate in on providing communication tools to canines. Maybe you saw this segment on CBS Sunday Morning or some other reporting on this work. The dogs are given buttons, each of which plays a recording of a spoken word. We know dogs have some capacity to understand spoken language, since they can be trained to respond to commands. The word buttons close the loop, allowing the dogs to use words as well. While the sophistication of the speech may be disappointing for anyone expecting the translator collars from Up, this setup actually requires more intelligence on the part of the dogs since they have to do the translating themselves–possibly with some deciphering by the humans as well. The idea that the dog can press a button that says “dinner” when he’s hungry or “toy” when he wants to play seems pretty straightforward. Combining “downstairs” and “broccoli” to request a vegetable-flavored treat kept downstairs instead of “upstairs broccoli” (florets kept upstairs) is more intriguing.
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language
Science Corner: Take Me to Your Victrola
On a trip to the National Air & Space Museum with my son this weekend, I had a chance to look at a copy of one of the records that was sent on the Voyager space probe. The photo on the right shows the top of the record, which is meant to provide details on how to play it and how to decode the images stored on it. (We sent both music and images intended to represent the ecological and cultural diversity of Earth.) These instructions also include some basic science and the coordinates of our planet. It is believed any society sufficiently advanced to retrieve the probe and records from space will be able to decipher this information.
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Science Corner: What the FOXP2 Say
Regardless of how one understands our relationship to the animal kingdom, many of us are interested in what distinguishes us biologically from animals, especially the animals most similar to us: chimpanzees, gorillas, and the like. Thanks to genomics and widely quoted numbers like 98% genetic similarity between humans and chimps, DNA becomes central to how we answer that question. One gene that has become popular to mention in that conversation is FOXP2. There is evidence linking FOXP2 to language, and of course language is one of those traits where humans really stand out. Buffalo buffalo may buffalo Buffalo buffalo, but they’re not getting any people to believe they can even utter such a sentence, let alone parse or diagram it.
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Science Corner: The Word for ‘Gene’
Mosquito control is generally not a primary public health concern in the United States, thanks in no small part to substantial mosquito control campaigns of the last century that eliminated diseases like yellow fever and malaria which were endemic or transmitted regularly here. For example, in the early days of our country, our federal government was evacuated from Philadelphia (then the capital) to escape a yellow fever epidemic. Since mosquito control was successful here, it seems reasonable to share that success with other countries. Unfortunately, some of the insecticides we’ve used in the past had significant negative consequences, so there’s a search for more benign solutions.
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Responding to Overnaming in Academia
Today, Matthew Boedy wraps up his four part series on overnaming. See Post 1 here, Post 2 here, and Post 3 here. For other work by Matthew at the ESN blog, including a series on the academic job search, click here.Â
In this four-part series, I have tried to think about one particular aspect of language: naming. In describing the appearance of our central problem called overnaming, I suggested that when we speak with a moral knowledge we are in fact showing our original sin. But when we speak ethically, we recognize the presence of good and evil in all our words. In the third post, I suggested two key responses to this fact: relinquishing possession of language and risking the identity that comes from that possession. In this post I want to think through how that might work out in higher education.
Let me state the obvious: it is really hard and sometimes felt as impossible for academics to do these two things. We are people with ‘doctor’ before our name or many letters after it. We are the people who think for a living. We lecture. We know stuff.
And we use words to show off. We can talk all day about the humility of learning from our students, the mindlessness that is working for a professionalized university, or the sheer cognitive dissonance many of us feel when we enter a church where intellectual activity usually means merely “applying the sermon.†We need to get this out in the open.
We are the worst offenders of overnaming. I will admit it, if no one else will.
But the very fact that we are academics also, I think, makes us the best resource for responding to overnaming. We have worked with words. We have seen that language isn’t a window; it is a complex host of motives, egos, sins, and blessings. For every wonderful, beautiful sentence we read and write, that same sentence should make us pause, not in awe. We are the chiefest of sinners and so can be the apostle of ethics.
How might relinquishing possession of language and risking the identity that comes from that possession work in the academy?
First, it means getting out of our disciplinary silos. Cross-disciplinary research and teaching is a hot trend now. The recurrence of this age-old topic still means letting go of trying to convince those outside our discipline that our discipline is better. In rhetoric, we call this the ‘big R’ problem. As in, is it Rhetoric or rhetoric? It is a matter of importance (i.e. funding and number of students). Yet a cross-disciplinary action means questioning disciplinary definitions (i.e. ownership) of words like pedagogy, communication, or truth. (And yes, Rhetoric owns all three.) That means teaching students to see broadly, not instrumentally. It also means noting that the university is not a competition or business, but something less based on results.
This may seem all idealistic and abstract to you. So let us move on to risking identities. Brass tacks, indeed.
If to speak ethically we have to risk the identities that ownership of language gives us, then that starts with “I.†And whatever unhealthy way we have defined it: professor, intellectual, or teacher. Many wise people note we shouldn’t put any other identity on ourselves other than ‘child of God’ or Beloved. This is indeed a corrective to the career identity. It is also a simplified identity—less of an overname. Thomas Merton once said he was dismayed at “dentists†who wanted to show their Christian identity through their job. He said, just be a dentist. Simplify your title. Because Lord knows there are plenty of others in the university who have extensive titles. Instead of spending our time defining ourselves against other titles, rest in the one that is wide enough for growth and tight enough to sustain it.
It also means risking the identity of essential. If we don’t own language, we can’t be the last definer of our own words. We don’t get to decide what others think, feel, or ‘get’ from those words. We as authors are not the only essential for meaning. That doesn’t mean we don’t write, but write differently. That means in teaching we are more explorers with students, than dictators of what they should know. It means less outcomes, yet deeper ones. It also means we are open to change whether it be in terms of discipline or department.
In claiming our identity is essential to language, we overname some word—its possibilities, its power. When we name ethically we open up the name to different possibilities. Very practically, this is a way to more productive research. What problem can we create from the problems already stated? What space can we define in the research from the very discrete spaces already made? I am not refusing authorial intent, but refusing intent as the only way to knowledge.
In the end, speaking ethically is not a cure for overnaming. It is merely a response—a faithful presence amid a world deformed by its knowledge of good and evil. It means constantly striving toward an unknown goal, constantly redirecting grace toward selves constantly changing.
Let me finish on some open-ended questions. How does the question of identity left open as a question affect your day? Have you even asked that before? How does using language in a way that does not show possession affect your writing? Have you even asked that before?
Have you ever spoken ethically? My prayer is you begin.
Image courtesy of geralt at Pixabay.com