<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

<p><italic>Re</italic>-<italic>evoking</italic> examines how languaging enacts human social intelligence. Turning from linguistic tradition, we reduce language to neither abstracta nor form. Rather, as human activity, languaging enables people to co-act as they direct attention within what Margolis (2010b; 2016) calls an enlanguaged world. Given their embodiment, people use languaging to evoke absent others in a flow of action, feeling, judgment, and attitudes. Although based on organism-environment coupling, languaging is also activity that re-evokes the absent. In an enlanguaged world, people use emplaced activity as part of practices, events, situations, artifacts, and so on. Hence, people reach beyond the body as they re-evoke the absent by languaging or, by definition, “activity in which wordings play a part.” As we suggest, absent people are evoked by <italic>othering</italic>. In common domains (e.g. a school), social habits give rise to dispositions during a history of co-acting that, later, can re-evoke absent others and past selves. Having begun with a literary example, we later turn to a detailed case study to show <italic>how</italic> a narrator brings feeling to languaging (in this case, frustration) as she re-evokes other people as they are for her. In conclusion, we suggest that radical embodiment needs to be extended to include how human practices link coupling with social intelligence as people channel what they do with the help of languaging.</p>
</abstract>

Re-evoking examines how languaging enacts human social intelligence. Turning from linguistic tradition, we reduce language to neither abstracta nor form. Rather, as human activity, languaging enables people to co-act as they direct attention within what Margolis (2010b; 2016) calls an enlanguaged world. Given their embodiment, people use languaging to evoke absent others in a flow of action, feeling, judgment, and attitudes. Although based on organism-environment coupling, languaging is also activity that re-evokes the absent. In an enlanguaged world, people use emplaced activity as part of practices, events, situations, artifacts, and so on. Hence, people reach beyond the body as they re-evoke the absent by languaging or, by definition, “activity in which wordings play a part.” As we suggest, absent people are evoked by othering. In common domains (e.g. a school), social habits give rise to dispositions during a history of co-acting that, later, can re-evoke absent others and past selves. Having begun with a literary example, we later turn to a detailed case study to show how a narrator brings feeling to languaging (in this case, frustration) as she re-evokes other people as they are for her. In conclusion, we suggest that radical embodiment needs to be extended to include how human practices link coupling with social intelligence as people channel what they do with the help of languaging.

Re-evoking absent people: what languaging implies for radical embodiment

Linguistic Frontiers

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

{"article-title":"Re-evoking absent people: what languaging implies for radical embodiment"}

Re-evoking examines how languaging enacts human social intelligence. Turning from linguistic tradition, we reduce language to neither abstracta nor form....

Re-evoking absent people: what languaging implies for radical embodiment

Published Online: Oct 26, 2023

Page range: 64 - 77

Received: Jan 01, 2023

Accepted: Feb 01, 2023

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/lf-2023-0012

Keywords
languaging, othering, the absent, radical embodiment, ecolinguistics, distributed language

© 2023 Stephen J. Cowley et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Re-evoking absent people: what languaging implies for radical embodiment

Published Online: Oct 26, 2023

Page range: 64 - 77

Received: Jan 01, 2023

Accepted: Feb 01, 2023

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/lf-2023-0012

Keywordslanguaging, othering, the absent, radical embodiment, ecolinguistics, distributed language

© 2023 Stephen J. Cowley et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Keywords
languaging, othering, the absent, radical embodiment, ecolinguistics, distributed language