UC Berkeley Dissertations, Department of Linguistics
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UC Berkeley Dissertations, Department of Linguistics Title Speech Lost from Speech: The Cognitive Linguistics of Alienation, Objectification, and Reclaiming Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7rv3j4nf Author Chen, Melinda Publication Date 2004 eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Speech Lost from Speech: The Cognitive Linguistics of Alienation, Objectification, and Reclaiming by Melinda Yuen-ching Chen B.S. (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) 1991 M.A. (University of California, Berkeley) 1998 A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics in the GRADUATE DIVISION of the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY Committee in charge: Professor Eve Sweetser, Chair Professor Trinh T. Minh-ha Professor Judith Butler Professor George Lakoff Spring 2004 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Speech Lost from Speech: The Cognitive Linguistics of Alienation, Objectification, and Reclaiming ©2004 by Melinda Yuen-ching Chen Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Abstract Speech Lost From Speech: The Cognitive Linguistics of Alienation, Objectification, and Reclaiming by Melinda Yuen-ching Chen Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics University of California, Berkeley Professor Eve Sweetser, Chair This work, combining scholarship and research in linguistics, psychology, cognitive science, feminist theories, and cultural/critical studies, is a cognitive-linguistic inquiry into the “technology” of alienative and de-alienative language, particularly along lines of race/ethnicity, gender, and sexuality in the United States. Highlighting interrelations of agency, emotion, language performance, social identity, corporeal subjectivity, and cognitive rationality, through analysis of selected research I suggest a revision of the cognitive-linguistic conception of linguistic subjectivity, allowing for alienation that inheres at once in social position and in one’s relation to language itself. The first two chapters introduce the ontological and epistemological concern of linguistic alienation, as well as the theoretical frameworks, Cognitive Grammar and Mental Space Integration, supporting this study. I examine how we might define such a dynamic sensibility as sociocultural alienation, one that is almost by definition so reflexive that it “contaminates” its own expression in that sociocultural space, removing itself from the domain of what can be meant (Searle). Not accounting for this alienation, I claim, has led to the imputation of a particularly present linguistic subject, one presumably fully 1 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. engaged in “fugual” linguistic interaction and “hypnotically” focused on the topic of discussion (Goffman), rather than vigilantly moving back and forth between the maintenance of the flow of conversation and the anxious substantiation of self. A case is made for the integrated consideration of affect with cognition. Chapter 3 investigates one of alienative language’s salient instances: objectification, here understood as a dynamic process, an often socially inscribed distantiation of some person or group in a representational field that constitutes a movement away from what they desire or would claim to possess - whether beloved persons, abstract humanist rights, conventional roles as agentive interlocutors, or cherished self-identities. Chapter 4 investigates objectification’s loose inverse: “reclaimings,” or moves aiming for symbolic self- (re)possession. Two case studies, the reclaimings of epithets “black” and “queer”, are examined historically and critically. The final chapter suggests how an interdisciplinary approach can enrich a linguist’s study of language performances that are ultimately both embodied and “felt”; at the same it proposes deeply reflexive approaches to both subjectivity and objectivity in research. Chair Date 2 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Table of Contents Acknowledgments ............................ ii Chapter 1. Out of Speech: Alienation, Cognition, Identity, and Language Performance ....................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 2. Alienation Conceived, Cognitively and Affectively ..........................................58 Chapter 3. Perspective and Blending in a Cognitive-Linguistic Approach to Objectification ................................................................................................................... 89 Chapter 4. Reclaiming: Cognitive Repossessions of the (Subjective) Self. ...... 163 Chapter 5. Conclusion: Identity on an Interdisciplinary Surface .............................. 249 References ..............................................................................................................................260 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Acknowledgments The support I have received over the years has been extraordinary. I would like first to thank two people without whose presence I might not have been able to complete this project. Eve Sweetser provided intellectual enrichment, stewardship, collegiality, and friendship, as well as enthusiasm whose influence is by now inseparable from my own academic being. Gil Hochberg’s early presence provided the dialogues in which I first began to articulate a critical study of language. Her taste for expressive mischief kept me on my toes and constantly humbled before the possibility of final, determinative linguistic analysis; she became an agile cognitive linguist so that she could serve as a superb critic and editor. I am grateful to the other professors directly involved with my dissertation work: Trinh T. Minh-ha, besides her trenchant, wide-ranging thinking, enabled me to feel pleasure and theory at once; conveyed a tenor of teaching that has influenced my own; and broke apart the very idea of living in a singular modality. Judith Butler provided great inspiration, help, and erudite advice despite my sporadic appearances. Robin Lakoff modeled critical work in linguistics for me and led a thought-provoking interdisciplinary seminar on performativity. Carolyn Dinshaw welcomed my first venture outside of linguistics, encouraged and fostered my interest in “reclaiming” from seminar to exam, and provided generous assistance long after her departure from Berkeley. George Lakoff first got me thinking about cognitive subjectivity. My dearest friends Susan Chen, Vivian Chin, Dev Rana, Paula Radetzky, Roslyn McKendry, Willy Wilkinson, Georgia Kolias, Keri Kanetsky, Sunny Yoon, Diane ii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. LaVoie, Tamarah Cohen, Martina Tissberger, Karen Tongson, Katrin Pahl, and Emma Bianchi kept me going by sharing their wisdom about living life fairly and well, and joining me in extraordinary acts of gourmandise. Vivian added useful commentary and diligence in reading my chapters; dialogues with Dev immeasurably enriched connections for me between theory and life. Margaret Thompson was an important guide and mirror. And I am grateful to Rebekah Edwards for jump-starting this lapsed mental-spaces theorist by asking me to diagram Paul Eluard’s “the world is blue like an orange,” setting off frenzied chatter and Word drawings, and for all her recent sweetness that has helped me to feel grounded and buoyant at once. For dissertation work I would additionally like to thank the Designated Emphasis in Women, Gender, and Sexuality for providing an important home and for making my project legible not only to others but to myself; Kevin Moriarty for his insights in a two- person dissertation group I wish I had had long before we started; and the DE and CogLing dissertation groups. My students through the years lent meaning to the whole enterprise, as their questions impelled me to start from the beginning. Last but by no means least, my family, Ruth, Michael, and Derek Chen, who have supported the most important dimensions of my being and the work that comes of it. Derek is a brother I could not have dreamed up. I am grateful for his growing friendship and lifelong care, and the surprise bag of gifts he left by my door after my first set of exams. Mom and Dad were sometimes the only people to whom my news was at all interesting. They shouted anyway. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 1. Out of Speech: Alienation, Cognition, Identity, and Language Performance [T]he book itself is only a tissue of signs, an imitation that is lost, infinitely deferred. (Roland Barthes, “The Death of the Author”, 1977 [1968]) I am visible - see this Indian face - yet I am invisible. 1 both blind them with my beak nose and am their blind spot. (Gloria Anzaldua, “La Conciencia de la Mestiza”, 1987) To alienate conclusively, definitionally, from anyone on any theoretical ground the authority to describe and name their own sexual desire is a terribly consequential seizure. In this century, in which sexuality has been made expressive of the essence of both identity and knowledge, it may represent the most intimate violence possible. (Eve Sedgwick,