Episode 60 How linguistics can save the world

Welcome back to the Structured Visions podcast! In this episode we save the world. For me, saving the world means identifying ‘new ways of thinking about social structure’. Here are the things that need rethinking:

the inequitable distribution of resources the isolation and marginalisation of difference an impulse toward self-destruction, and a lack of respect for the natural world.

We can tackle all of these from a range of different disciplines, but on the Structured Visions podcast, we spend most of our time in the ‘linguistics’ section of the world library. If linguistics is going to change the world, we’ll need a new story about language. In the old story, language comes at the end of an evolutionary narrative – it’s a means by which complex organisms can communicate with their species. In the new story, language isn’t the newcomer – it was there from the beginning, approximately squillions of years ago. According to the new story, language is primarily a mechanism for producing structures. Like DNA, and RNA.

To explore this idea, we need to know something about how DNA and RNA produce structures. Thankfully, we have John Perry from Stated Clearly and Your genome to help us.

And we’ll have a look at a strand of language from Marcus, an American in Strasbourg. What structure is he producing when he says, about French people in the supermarket, ‘They’re all like, “Stupid American”’?

So here’s how to save the world with linguistics, in three simple steps:

Put attention to the social structures produced in tiny strands of grammar Recognise any patterns that contribute to self-destruction Identify alternative patterns.

And then cultivate these alternative patterns. Imagine new structures, and cultivate them.

What ideas do you have about saving the world? Let me know in the comments. Or on twitter: @jodieclarkling

Can’t wait to hear from you.