Beyond the stories-we-live-by

Beyond the stories-we-live-by: a review of Arran Stibbe's Ecolinguistics (2015)

By Rodrigo Cáceres

It's been a couple of months now since I got introduced into the field of ecolinguistics and I finally got to finish Arran Stibbe's essential and excellent book "Ecolinguistics". One is specially grateful for the outstanding work of putting together different theories from linguistics and cognitive science in a coherent interdisciplinary approach, which allow us to understand the ingrained and rooted stories-we-live-by (ideologies, identities, convictions, frames, appraisal patterns, salience/erasure patterns) that are leading to the self-destruction of modern societies through the extermination of animals, plants, insects and ecosystems. 

In this post I would like to criticize some aspects of the book in the aim of broadening the scope of ecolinguistics in light of theories from the field of anthropology.

Language is, as this book makes evident, an extremely powerful device. As linguists, we have thus a great responsibility to be careful with its use and specially aware of the kinds of stories and ideologies we are conveying when employing it. 

So, one of the central concepts of this book is the term stories-we-live-by, referring to "cognitive structures which influence how multiple individuals across a culture perceive the world" (p.6).

Nevertheless, scientific rigour demands us to ask: Who exactly is part of the "we" in the stories-we-live-by? From which culture is this "we"? Is somebody left out of this "we"?

Schleppegrell (1997) is quite critical around the use of generic and indeterminate subjects such as "we", "humans" or "us" since they do not allow to identify real social actors nor institutions. These indeterminate subjects also homogenize and standardize humans, erasing cultural diversity. For example, we can safely say that indigenous communities such as the Pygmies, Inuit, Mapuche, etc. are not responsible for the global destruction of nature, and thus, that they are not part of this generic "we".

What is problematic then is that there is a certain inconsistency, a weak correspondence between the name of the concept (stories-we-live-by) and the definition proposed by the author. On the one hand, the definition makes reference to "cognitive structures in the minds of individuals across a culture". However, when the author employs the indeterminate subject "we", it includes at the very least the reader and the author himself (or otherwise it can include all human beings on Earth: that is why it is called an indeterminate subject). In this case, one has to make the implicit assumption that both the reader and the author are part of the same culture, which is not necessarily true. Nonetheless, with this "we" formulation in no instance one can know precisely which culture is the one the author is making reference, so the cultural aspect itself is effectively erased. In other words, through using the subject "we", the author can avoid naming the specific culture that conveys a certain set of stories in which "we" are supposed to live.

From a linguistic perspective, the "we" subject evokes vividly an ensemble of individuals, including  the author and the reader. But the idea that we are part of a specific culture is absolutely not salient in this kind of framing. "We" does not evoke the concept of "culture" that is incorporated in the definition, and neither does it evoke the idea that there are other cultures living through other stories. This is precisely why I argue that there is a weak correspondence between the concept and its proposed definition.

In this sense, are we capable to determine more clearly who is part of this "we" ?

Part of the answer comes from looking at recent work in anthropology, in what is call the "ontological turn" of recent anthropology. Arturo Escobar (2016), for example, affirms that "the [ecological and social] crisis is the crisis of a particular world or set of world-making practices". Main authors such as Philippe Descola (2014) and Escobar speak of the existence of multiple worlds, of a diversity of worlds, i.e. a pluriverse (Escobar, 2016). In the language of ecolinguistics, a world would constitute an ideological set / a set of stories (including dominant frames, convictions, identities, appraisal patterns, etc.) that are materialized in a set of practices of world-making, in which humans realize themselves as humans.

Different worlds are thus different communities of people that live in different sets of stories/ideologies, and thus they live and enact different practices and institutions. Pygmies and Inuit would be thus other worlds since they are governed by different sets of stories/ideologies in which they realize themselves as humans.

If the ecological crisis is not a crisis of "the world" but a crisis of a very particular world, which world is it and which stories and ideologies characterize it? 

In the literature the names for this world vary from the "modern world", the "dualist world" (Escobar, 2016) the "naturalist world" (because it invented the concept of nature) (Descola, 2014) or Euromodernity (capitalist, patriarchal, rationalist and liberal). Escobar (2016) describes the modern world as a One World-World (OWW), "a world allegedly made up of a single Word, and that has arrogated for itself the right to be “the” world, subjecting all other worlds to its own terms or, worse, to non-existence; this is a World where only a world fits."  (p.15)

This approach would naturally change the ecosophy of the book (an ecosophy is a system of held values with which one can morally judge ideologies and stories) in productive ways, since it allows to identify something/someone that is responsible for the ecological crisis. This is opposite to what is done in Stibbe's ecosophy, namely because of his use of the combination of nominalisations and the passive voice (Schleppegrell, 1997). These two linguistic mechanisms allow the author to avoid attributing any form of responsibility for the destruction of nature. Concretely, this is done through the clauses "significant ecological destruction is already occurring" and "the ecological damage already done" (p.15) that do not need to identify anything/anyone as responsible for their occurrence.

So which are the foundational stories/ideologies of the modern world ?

- Stibbe (2015) makes an excellent overview of the (destructive) discourse of neoclassical economics, including the two main identities "consumers" and "producers" and their purely materialist concerns; the erasure of animals and plants; the appraisal pattern "Economic growth is good"; the "nature is a resource" frame; the "corporation is a person" metaphor. This is the main discourse that structures global capitalism today. This discourse also structures dominant environmental discourse today, which uses the economic frame to talk about the destruction of nature in the terms of "market failures", or as problems of "efficient use of resources" or as in the need for "green technology" and for "sustainable development".

- Sahlins (2008) argues that there are two foundational beliefs/convictions of the modern world. First is the conviction that there is such a thing as a human nature, this is, that there is a pre-cultural form of being that is innate and shared by all human beings, which constitutes a basis from which different cultures establish themselves. The second is the conviction that this human nature is associated to a state of bestiality, greed, violence, and a pulsion towards seeking one's own interests above all. In this manner, in their "natural state" humans are bestial animals only care about themselves, that fear each other and that need to be constrained, dominated in order for them to live together in community.

- The conviction of the existence of a human nature and the conviction that this nature is bestial and uncontrollable are the basic assumptions for the theorization and imagination of hierarchic forms of government, such as monarchy, the republic and the modern State, as institutions capable of constraining people's cupidity and inspiring fear and authority (Sahlins, 2008).

- From a linguistic perspective, the idea that nature is bestial has been historically communicated through the frames of "Nature is war" and "Nature is a battle/competition", that are employed by authors as influential as Charles Darwin (Krementsov and Todes, 1991) and Thomas Hobbes (Sahlins, 2008).

- The conviction that there is a bestial and cupid human nature establishes a separation and a discontinuity between humans and animals, and an opposition between reason and emotion. Namely, reason is associated with humanity and emotions are associated with animality. This, of course, implies appraisal patterns in which emotions are valued negatively (this is evident in the words bestial, violence, animal, greed) and rationality is valued positively. Naturally, this implies valuing negatively animals (since they embody emotions, bestiality and irrationality) and valuing positively men (not women) and their capacity for reason. (In practice this refers more accurately to white males having high positions in society).

- The idea and the practice of repressing emotional phenomena and the cultivation of pure reason is the foundation of the identity that we call "Masculinity" (Hooper, 2000). Ecofeminist theory establishes clear links between gender and the destruction and objectification of nature. In this sense, one can identify a certain coherence among the different elements of the ideological edifice of the modern world (convictions, identities, appraisal patterns and frames) and the historical conditions in which this ideological edifice has evolved through time.

How do these elements would change our ecosophy? Firstly, it would change what needs to be resisted. Stibbe claims that stories and discourses are the objects that should be resisted. This posits stories as Actors of material processes. For example, stories can be destructive and they can be resisted (p.2).

Is it warranted to consider stories as Actors? Yes and no. Yes, since stories and ideologies are historical phenomena. For example, the concept of nature dates back to the 17th century and its history goes beyond the particular people that have employed it. And then no, because stories and ideologies do not exist in the void, they are employed and instituted by real people with real interests, which think in the terms of what ideologies define as real and as important. It is thus of utmost importance to not lose sight of the fact that real people are conveying, establishing and maintaining destructive discourses in place.

Thus, from an anthropological perspective, what needs to be resisted is a world, and not any world, but particularly the modern or dualist world (capitalist, patriarchal, liberal and rationalist), which is enacted through a set of stories and ideologies that lead to all the injustice, extreme inequality and extermination of life that we know.

By way of conclusion, the concept of stories-we-live-by appears to be too generic and indeterminate as a tool for scientific inquiry of language, mainly because of its use of the indeterminate subject "we", which erases any form of "otherness". With this formulation the author can avoid describing key aspects of modern culture, and it is effectively what he does: no use of the word 'capitalism' nor 'patriarchy' nor 'rationalism' nor 'industrialism' in the whole book (other than in certain citations), which are all central aspects of modern culture.

This kind of reluctance to calling things by their name is quite symptomatic or our time, as you might have noticed. In public discourse one almost never hears the words 'capitalism' or 'patriarchy', as if they had become taboo words, representing just "the way things are".

Instead, speaking about a diversity of existing worlds makes evident how the modern world is one amongst a multitude of other worlds, within which one can find other ideological sets and stories, in indigenous worlds for example, that are inclusive, just, equitable and respectful of animals, plants and ecosystems.

References

Escobar, A. (2016). Thinking-feeling with the Earth: Territorial Struggles and the Ontological Dimension of the Epistemologies of the South. AIBR. Revista de Antropología Iberoamericana, 11(1), 11-32.

Descola, P. (2014). Modes of being and forms of predication. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 4(1), 271-280.

Hooper, C. (2000). Disembodiment, embodiment and the construction of hegemonic masculinity. In Political Economy, Power and the Body (pp. 31-51). Palgrave Macmillan, London.

Krementsov, N. and Todes, D. 1991. On metaphors, animals, and us. Journal of Social Issues 47(3): 67–81.
Sahlins, M. D. (2008). The Western illusion of human nature. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press.

Schleppegrell, M. J. (1997). Agency in environmental education. Linguistics and Education, 9(1), 49-67.

Stibbe, A. (2015). Ecolinguistics: Language, ecology and the stories we live by. Routledge.