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108 Adulting, and stuff like that
Manage episode 479899321 series 2964320
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Conversations with final-year university students has brought back all the fears that I had in my mid- to late twenties about having to be a grown up. The secret to soothing those fears for me was… studying linguistics. More specifically, it was ‘like’ and stuff like that (discourse markers and general extenders).
If you’re curious about what made me want to investigate American speakers’ use of like in conversation, have a listen to Episode 86 (Feelings are, like, inside things).
In this episode I discuss general extenders, which take the form CONJUNCTION + PROFORM + (optional) MODIFER: and stuff (like that), and things (like that), and everything (like that), and all (that), or something (like that), or anything (like that). I discuss an article by Maryann Overstreet that examines how general extenders have become grammaticalized over time. They have followed a common pattern in grammaticalization, where linguistic elements go from being mostly propositional or ideational, to mostly interpersonal. In other words, when bits of language become more incorporated into grammatical structure, they become more subjective, more oriented to self.
But my obsession with the mysteries of language, which was sparked in my terrifying early adulthood, has led me to wonder if all the grammar of human languages is oriented to self—organised around the principle of selfhood.
The assumption that human beings are more conscious because they have language often remains unquestioned. But what if human beings—limited as they are by a self-producing human language—are less conscious than the rest of the material world? In this episode I propose that the more-than-human-world is organised according to principles other than selfhood. There is no division. There may be layers of perspectives, but not the division of selfhood that requires perspectives be separate from each other.
Here's the transcript I was reading from.
The story I read in this episode is ‘The Earth's boast.’
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