Word culture

Jay Lemke (JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU)
Wed, 11 Oct 95 23:45:28 EDT

A brief comment on the recent messages about cultural biases
towards verbal expression. I think we should take very seriously
the argument of Lisa Delpit (1) that some cultures and
subcultures (and I would particularly name middle-class European
and American cultures and especially the academic subculture) seem
to regard verbal-linguistic expression as the only truly explicit,
truly precise, truly intellectual, truly rational form of meaning-
making -- and certainly as the most and best in each of these
respects --and (2) that this bias probably devalues and discourages
other styles and preferences for meaning-making. As bad as (1) may
be, especially in education, (2) seems even worse.

As a matter of actual practice, verbal-linguistic expressions
operate in a meaningful manner in their social and actional contexts
necessarily and only when they are accompanied by a whole host
of other, non-linguistic, non-verbal semiotic practices. Words
cannot and do not make meaning by themselves, whatever our
biases may incline us to believe. So we all do always make our
meanings also in non-verbal ways, and to discourage conscious
awareness of this or respect for it is pretty foolish and
counterproductive, particularly in education -- where it is
most rampant.

In thinking critically about why we do these foolish things,
and think ourselves wise to do them, we might consider that
this bias, within Euro-American culture, is not so much
specifically a cultural bias as it is a class bias. It is
intimately related to the rationalizing ideology for valuing
and rewarding verbal work more highly than manual work. It is
also related to the dominant strategies of control (or the
disguise of control) by using symbolic modes of power where
possible rather than physical force (certainly used, but
not talked about).

I very much doubt that members of our subculture can really
discuss the merits and drawbacks of verbal-linguistic vs
other modes of meaning-making in either an informed or an
objective way. We are far too deeply inside the ideologies that
support our own class interests in these matters. What we
can perhaps do is observe (I will not say "listen to") the
practices of Others and try to understand (verbally no doubt)
just how they manage to carry on quite successfully (except
insofar as we put obstacles in their way) with a lot less
verbalism and a lot more of the many very effective alternatives.

Pardon all these words -- JAY.

JAY LEMKE.
City University of New York.
BITNET: JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM
INTERNET: JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU