Language Frames Ecological Relations

One of the essential questions that I wished to explore in this thesis is that of how language shapes our ecological realities. In Jack Turner's The Abstract Wild, he asserts that the rhetoric used to define Nature or the Wild determines how a relationship is thenceforth carried out. To begin to tend to the wounds of the planet and patch our damaged marriage, we must first opt for a new way of referring to it (and I would even venture to say addressing it). In Turner's words:

"Since a theory is merely a description of the world, a new set of agreements about the West [environmentalism] requires some new descriptions of the world and our proper place in it ...The fight is over intellectual, not physical, resources. Environmentalists fight to reduce the authority of certain descriptions--e.g., 'private property'-- and to extend the authority of other descriptions--e.g., 'ecosystem' "(p. 54).

Turner especially hones in on how "economic language (and its extensions in law) exhaustively describes our world and, hence, becomes our world" (p. 58). Examples of this observation is how forests and ore become "natural resources", cows become "livestock" (pay close attention: live-stock), land becomes "property", wildlife becomes something to be "managed", etc. If we change our language, perhaps we will feel differently about the ways in which we interact with our ecological counterparts, perhaps even change those ways.

My ears attentive for more evidence of this phenomenon, I picked up on the following exchange at my friends' house, where they are starting a small urban farm, in regard to the ladies of the coop. I noticed the slight differences in the way the questions were phrased by different members of the house reflected subtle attitudinal differences towards their feathered friends:

"Are we getting any eggs?"

vs.

"Are the chickens giving any eggs?"

vs.

"Are the chickens laying?"

The first sees the chickens for their pure utility, and "we" are the important center around which the question revolves. The chickens themselves are not even mentioned, only their purpose (eggs) in relation to us. In the second, the (us) is still implied in the "giving", but the chickens are honored in being the subject of the question and acknowledged in their bestowing of eggs. The language of the third is perhaps the most respectful in that "we" are not in the sentence but rather the chickens as autonomous subjects fulfilling their natural cycles, which "we" only happen to benefit from.

If there is anything I have learned in my times of silence, it is how loose we can be with our tongues, how oft we speak without realizing the true implications of the arrangements of our words. Let us extend to those who provide our plates with food the courtesy of making them the subjects of our speech.