There is a language in the landscape: towards an ecology of meaning

Abstract

The main idea for Jakob Meløe is that our concepts originate in what we do: a toddler's expressions come from the lifeworld and environment of a toddler, and a fisherman's concepts originate in the practice of fishing and a life of seafaring. In this way words are related to a certain practice, but also to a certain place. The landscape that we call 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 on how human language comes about. Meløe's approach, which he mainly got from Wittgenstein, provides us with an understanding in which humans and environment are not separated, but entwined in an inevitable relationality. By elaborating on this view and connecting it with current works in enactivism and phenomenology, the article moves towards an affective account of perception and concepts. How we make sense of an environment is not solely dependent on knowledge, but also on the ways in which a place and its particular qualities affect us, resonate within us and provide us horizons for meaning. This entails a holistic account in which human language is not separated, transcendent or external to the nonhuman realm, but rather an expression of our affectivity and relationality. Tim Ingold emphasizes this when he notes that the word ‘text’ contains the original etymology from the Latin texere, meaning ‘to weave’ (2002, 404). Through concepts we create our relations not only to, but also with the world.