by
Leland McCleary
University
of São Paulo
Currents in Electronic Literacy Spring 2001 (4), <http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/currents/spr01/mccleary.html>
Endnotes
10. Some linguists even avoid the expression “speak a language”, so as not to reinforce the idea that “a language” pre-exists independently of the act of speaking. They prefer to think of language as a verb, an activity in which people deploy linguistic resources – words, phrases, sentences created on prior occasions of use – in the construction of new texts, always in the service of the multiple, shifting and often conflicting objectives impinging on the speakers during the speech event. I am thinking primarily of Alton (Pete) Becker, influenced linguistically by Kenneth Pike and philosophically by the American transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson.