Ok, my brain is so far overloaded with theory and book reviews that I have no clue which way is up. This will be my frazzled brain’s attempt at intelligently discussing a concept from this week’s reading.
Greenblatt’s piece begins with possibly the best line yet this semester. He goes further to discuss in brief modes of exchange in dealing with language. He discusses appropriation, purchase, and symbolic acquisition. I am going to discuss appropriation in this blog as his example is amazing.
Greenblatt describes appropriation as having “little or no payment” in acquiring, and gives the example of language. We all appropriate a language and some continue to appropriate, while others seemingly stop. Our words and rhetoric are free and “there for the taking” as Greenblatt describes.
I don’t see language as an appropriation because one does give back to the language community. Whether we realize it or not, our language that we have acquired will be given back in the long run. So, though the price is not material, our language is not merely there for the taking – it comes with a great price – the furthering, bettering, and teaching of the words in your power.
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According to Merriam-Webster online, to appropriate means:
ReplyDelete1: to take exclusive possession of : annex - Greenblatt has a point when he says that, for the most part, language is "there for the taking" - unless you count the whole thing about it becoming illegal for slaves to be educated (thus making it impossible for them to appropriate any form of written language).
2: to set apart for or assign to a particular purpose or use - Greenblatt makes the case that only ordinary language can be appropriated without "potential dangers" or "punishment or retaliation" (9).
3: to take or make use of without authority or right: In order to make a difference through language - or so we read in Bourdieu - we cannot simply speak the legitimate language, we must be given, or acquire, or be born into "authority or right," and Greenblatt assigns "the lower classes" a vulnerability which normally keeps them from appropriating that authority.
But, I think language can, and is, appropriated by dominated classes in instances of rebellion and revolution - they must claim the language and the power for their own through what Greenblatt might call
"Metaphorical Acquisition," that is "teasing out latent homologies, similitudes, systems of likeness, [depending] equally upon a deliberate distancing or distortion that precedes the disclosure of likeness" (10).
Examples (if I understand this definition rightly) might be the Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments or the Cherokee Constitution of 1827, both used "legitimate" U.S. documents as templates yet challenged dominant social construct via content.
Good point -- I should have tied in the pieces of "language use that are charged with potential dangers, powerful social charms that cannot be simply appropriated" (9). Ties back to Borurdieu's thoughts of language initiation -- you must be initiated into a culture before you use certain words. Throws my theory of give and take to the wolves.
ReplyDeletePerhaps a better idea was that within each class or group there is a series of give and take with and without appropriation. Thoughts?