22 October (Tuesday) | 02:30 PM | Fully onsite

Pilar Herrera Hall

Dr. Aldrin P. Lee

Associate Professor

UP Department of Linguistics

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As part of the College of Social Sciences and Philosophy (CSSP)’s celebration of the 150th birth anniversary of Rafael V. Palma, the UP Department of Linguistics is co-organizing the lecture, “Linguistics and Boundary-Making in the Social Sciences,” by Assoc. Prof. Aldrin P. Lee PhD.

The event is free and open to the public.

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ABSTRACT

The pivotal role of language in any epistemological work on knowledge production, and in the expression and transmittal of concepts in virtually all branches of human knowledge, is unequivocally recognized. However, the ways in which linguistics as the science of language informs the ontological frameworks of other academic disciplines is often underemphasized, if not obfuscated, knowingly or unknowingly. Foucault (1968/2023), one of the few explications of the significance of linguistic analysis to science, stated that in the beginning of the 19th century, the “sciences of language had arrived at a higher degree of precision and demonstrativeness than all of the other social or human sciences combined” (p. 262). The social sciences, as Foucault claimed in the same lecture, has been appealing to linguistics “for something like a form or a content of knowledge (connaisance) long before the present day” (p. 261).

In this talk, I wish to draw attention to a fundamental social process that I refer to as “boundary-making” and demonstrate how language and linguistic practices are utilized to achieve such purpose, and how theoretical tools developed in linguistics could be used to understand the social science concept of “boundaries” that is borne out of this process. I will build upon the seminal work of Gal & Irvine (1995) to show how linguistic ideologies that are operating through the semiotic processes of iconization, (fractal) recursivity, and erasure motivate the creation of linguistic and social boundaries interrelatedly. I will provide examples, primarily from the Philippine context, that cut across substantive areas (micro and macro levels of analysis) identified by Lamont & Molnár (2002) including 1) social and collective identity, 2) class, ethnic/racial and gender/sexual inequality, 3) professions, science, and knowledge, and 4) communities, national identities, and spatial boundaries.

Keywords: boundary-making, linguistic ideologies, social boundaries, symbolic boundaries, pagmumuhón

References used in this abstract:

Foucault, M. (2023). Linguistics and Social Sciences. Theory, Culture & Society, 40(1-2), 259-278. https://doi.org/10.1177/02632764221091549

Gal, Susan and Judith T. Irvine. 1995. “The Boundaries of Languages and Disciplines: How Ideologies Construct DiVerence.” Social Research 62(4): 966–1001.

Lamont, Michèle and Virág Molnár. 2002. “The Study of Boundaries in the Social Sciences”. Annual Review of Sociology, 28: 167-195.