If it is language that speaks, what do speakers do? Confronting Heidegger's language ontology

Abstract

Many of Heidegger’s statements about language should sound familiar to linguistic anthropologists, starting with the pragmatic-indexical functions of speaking (in Sein und Zeit) and continuing, in later years, with something resembling linguistic relativity. But a comparison of Heidegger’s ideas with those of some of his contemporaries who wrote about similar themes reveals that he had different goals, first among them “the destruction of western metaphysics,” which he pursued by means of a new philosophical metalanguage, full of unorthodox etymologies, ambiguous metaphors, and linguistic constructions that gave agency to non-human entities (e.g., “the world worlds,” “language speaks”). While offering himself as the prophet of innovative thinking and speaking, Heidegger also endorsed a conservative language ideology whereby some languages and some writers were said to be better equipped than others to capture the truth about the human condition. His decentering of the human subject ultimately turned into an antihumanist and elitist stance whereby most speakers are inauthentic “sounding boxes.” Drawing from concepts and analytic tools familiar to linguistic anthropologists I offer ways to counter Heidegger’s apocalyptic language ontology, explain the reasons of his success, and reflect on our own language ontology.