Actas da - Xunta de Galicia

Glyn Williams
4. Language, the social construction of meaning and communities of
practice
What begins to be clarified is the need to understand the overlap between the
technological capacity of ICT, the need for streamlined communication devoid
of 'noise interference', the generation of trust and the social construction of
meaning. The development of communicative human language technology has
been based on the use of formal linguistics with a strong emphasis upon
syntactic structures and a particular understanding of semantics. What is
overlooked is how formal linguistics as a meta discourse carries its own limiting
barriers to effective communication. In some respects it is the same issue as that
which pertains to an Economics premised upon the rational human actor
operating optimisation principles. Game theory is continuously demonstrating
that optimisation is far more complex and is often based upon principles other
than rationalisation. By the same token the manner in which formal linguistics
is premised upon both standardisation and the rational actor sets constraints
upon what can be said and how it must be said when it is used in conjunction
with technology. This limits the relevance of such systems for the social
construction of meaning. We argue that the solution involves deploying quite a
different approach involving the use of enonciative linguistics based upon
deictic processes. The issue to hand involves the claim that while it is easy to
translate language it is quite another matter to translate meaning. Yet the
preceding makes it abundantly clear that the link between trust and
communication among a community of practitioners relates to tacit skills which
have a great deal to do with the social construction of meaning and the
establishment of shared meaning.
Formal linguistics involves a relationship between logic and linguistics which
by reference to semantics involves the rational human actor selecting from
among a number of different choices in establishing 'meaning'. Meaning is
created and controlled by the individual. Enonciative linguistics (Culioli 1990)
operates on the principle that meaning is entirely ambiguous and that what
occurs in enonciation is the linking of components of time, person and place in
the construction of different subjects and objects. In this respect the subject does
not exist outside of discourse and is therefore not capable of playing the role
inferred by orthodox linguistics. Rather, meaning is the effect of discourse and
exists in the way in which the subject of discourse is linked to the individual.
The subject cannot exist outside of discourse in rationally constructing her
identity. Rather, identity is part of the construction of the subject in discourse
and how it is constituted in social practice.
This means that meaning is socially situated while also drawing upon prior
discourse or history in the construction of new meanings. We clearly cannot
reflect on every word we speak and therefore we have inherited discursive
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