Languages/languaging as world-making: the ontological bases of language

Abstract

This article makes a case for an engagement with language ontologies. Rather than asking what we know about language, theorising with ontologies prompts us to engage with what language is – or, might be. This focus has potential to broaden our work from examining different perspectives on, or ideological approaches to, a single assumed phenomenon (Language), to potentially seeing multiple, different phenomena. To develop our argument theoretically, we draw primarily on research stemming from the ontological turn in anthropology (Blaser, 2009, 2013; Holbraad, 2009; Holbraad and Pedersen, 2017; Viveiros de Castro, 2013 among others), as well as linguistic anthropology (Chernela, 2018; Seargeant, 2010). We dialogue across fields and disciplines—with philosophy, science and technology studies (Latour, 1993; Law, 2015), decolonial studies (Escobar, 2016) and language studies (García and Li, 2014; Li, 2018; Makoni and Pennycook, 2006; Pennycook, 2017, among others)—to situate language ontologies as worlded through linguistic practices. To contextualise the discussion, the paper explores three ontologies of language: language as object, language as practice, and language as assemblage.