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Capstone Project

Cover Letter

      The entire process of this Capstone project has been amazing. I began toying with idea way back in August with my ex- independent study advisory, Ms. Berryhill as a way to bring by independent study of Linguistics into senior year. I was lost for a long while, like a really long while, so I left it alone. When we finally addressed Capstone in AP Lit class, I had the tools to attack my ideas in a different way. I started thinking about my new vocabulary of agency, authority, submission, power, and so on. Lot and lots of thinking went on, but I finally landed on my project idea: language has power as an independent entity. Though my project was more conceptual in nature and required lots of thinking and mental hoops of formulation on my part, digging in to some fundamental readings was crucial to my progress. I read Barthes and Saussure and Derrida and was enthralled and curious and confused the whole was through but came out the other side more equipped to tackled the idea. This has been a wonderfully rewarding and challenging project to work on, and I am proud of my final work.

The Project

      I was thinking about minimalist art recently and found an interesting connection to my project. One way to think about minimalist art is to think about the artist relinquishing control. The artist can never fully control what meaning you derive from their piece. With some forms of art, realism for example, it is easier for an artist to guide your meaning-making process, but they can't be sure you'll draw the meaning they intend you to. The same is true for writers and speakers and anyone who uses language or tries to convey meaning in any way. I think, then, that one way of thinking about minimalist art is that it is the artist's way of letting go, of accepting the meaning gap.

      With this in mind, please continue on this page and participate in my meaning-making experience. You will get to see language in a new light and hopefully get to see that it has more power over you than you might think

 

Instructions

  1. Look at each piece. Take a little while to soak it in—consider the words, color, shape, form, etc. as a whole system working together (though especially focus on the words).

  2. Think about what you think about when you look at these pieces: what do they make you think of? Is there a story behind this piece? Does it make you think of a certain person, place, object? Does it bring to mind a specific memory?

  3. Remember these reactions, write them down if you like.

  4. Continue on the page.

#1

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#2

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#3

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#4

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      So, what did you think about?

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      Here are some responses from other people:

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Different from what you thought about, right? Some may be similar, but none are the exact same and none are what I thought about when making these pieces. Language has the power to affect you—most often through your thoughts—by itself, acting as an independent entity. Yes, we as the speakers and writers (and signers) of language are the cause for its existence but we are not the controllers of meaning, language itself is.

So next time you read something and think "what could the author possible be trying to get me to think about?!?", relax and know that it's not your fault.

Pre-Final Work:

Process, Drafting, Reflection 

Process Reflection #2

  • What steps have you taken toward completing the written component of your project?

    • Honestly not much beyond creating the outline, thesis, and continued thought process

  • What progress have you made toward completing your draft?

    • Same

  • What is left to be done to complete the draft?

    • ​The actual structure and flow of the paper

  • What are the most important ideas you have discovered through your working answers to your central question?  What have you discovered that others must understand in order to really understand the most important idea/s in your project?  What do you need others to understand in order to really understand the significance of your project?

    • Language can function as an independent entity

    • Non-living/-sentient entities have agency too

    • Language is how we interact with each other and the world, so the implications of this are large

  • What experience could you create so that someone could discover the central idea/s above through having or interacting with that experience?  Think of as many ways as possible. These interactive experiences are possible artifact ideas!

    • I could try to mimic the findings by Basso with the Apaches. How their stories about the landscape and world affect their moral judgement

  • What have you read or consulted to prepare for your artifact?  What examples of interactive artifacts have you explored?

    • I have explored the deep sea interactive that Dr. Holt has shared with us

    • I also helped out creating an artifact when my sister was in Dr. Holt’s class, so that aids my understanding

  • Who do you need to consult with to think about your artifact?

    • Probably both of my internal experts: Dr. Holt and Ms. Berryhill

  • What do you need to do to plan for and carry out the creation of the above artifact ideas?

    • Think… a lot of thinking

  • What are your next questions?

    • Am I behind? I feel like these questions assume that I’m further along than I am, so this is worrying me slightly.

  • What more do you need?

    • To make myself sit down and work on all of this

    • Time

    • More guidance

Annotated Bibliography

Ahearn, Laura M. “Language and Agency.” Annual Review of Anthropology, vol. 30, 2001, pp. 109–137. JSTOR,

www.jstor.org/stable/3069211.

          This paper is less argumentative than it is summative. Ahearn sets out to review and summarize the discussion of agency in the academic literature surrounding linguistics, which I found extremely helpful, elucidating, and thought provoking. The two most helpful things that I got from this paper were 1) next places to go for readings on my topic and 2) misreadings… by which I mean that I read the text incorrectly but ended up having realizations because of this (how fun!). I’ll start with the realizations/questions that came from misreadings: 

1) So if we create a new pronoun, like we have with “they” does the existence of this new pronoun then influence the creation of new gender identities?

2) Does the creations of queer-friendly language and nice queer language influence the following:

a) The sexual identities of individuals (by which I think I’m asking if the language would influence an individual’s location on the LGBT+ spectrum, i.e. in bastardized terms, would the language turn people gay… yeah…)?

i) This question really only makes sense if you see sexuality as influenced/determined, either entirely or in part, by one’s environment.

b) When an individual decides to act on their queerness, i.e. come out and/or participate in the community?

3) Can the existence (or absence) of certain kinds of language regulate (limit, allow, etc) the kinds of activities an individual or group of individuals participate in?

a) If the absence can do this, where is the agency in that system? What would that even mean for an absence of something to influence something else…? If it does make sense to say that the absence of something has agency, could one absence influence another absence? (Woah. My mind is going to explode)

4) By the nature of linguistic statements having multiple values, i.e. they have multiple interpretations, there must be some agency in there. Like if I misread someone’s language (which is basically where all of the above thoughts have come from), where is the agency in that misreading? Did I have the agency to misread the text or did the language have agency to be misread (because of its multiple values)?

*) This one wasn’t a misreading. Ahearn mentions Basso (1996) who talks about the agency of stories. These are Ahearn’s words: “historical tales create culturally and historically charged locations. Basso describes how historical tales themselves have agency and shape the moral judgements that Apaches make about themselves and other people. The landscape itself also exercises agency in this process, as the historically and morally significant places serve to remind Apaches of the stories associated with them. Through telling stories associated with particular places, the Western Apache construct a spatial, temporal, and cultural world that then serves to shape their future conduct. This is truly an instance of agency ‘extending beyond the skin’ (Bateson 1972, Wertsch et al 1993).”

Here are the two papers Ahearn cited that I think I should read:

1) Colapietro VM. 1989. Pierce’s Approach to the Self: A Semiotic Perspective on Human Subjectivity.

a) pp. 95-97, about the agency of signs

2) Basso K. 1996. Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language Among the Western Apache.

a) pg. 62, about the agency of stories

 

Barthes, Roland. “Mythologies.” Literary Theory: An Anthology. Ed. Rivkin, Julie and Ryan, Michael. 2nd ed. 2010.

          This source did not really do much to expand on my project idea; however, it provided more of a framework which makes talking about the elements of my project easier, essentially by expanding on the onomastic work of Saussure. Barthes begins by talking about myths (basically anything that uses language or another form of communication to create something that can convey meaning) and realizes that there is another layer of signifier, signified, and sign. The linguistic sign is transformed into the signifier within the larger system of the myth. Thus the signified is the message conveyed with the linguistic sign (the mythical signifier). Together, they make the mythical sign. Obviously using the same terms will not do, so Barthes creates new ones. The linguistic sign, also the mythical signifier, will be called meaning on the linguistic level and form on the mythical level. The signified will retain the same name on the linguistic level and be called the concept on the mythical level. The mythical sign will be called the signification. Here is a table to help:

 

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And an example:

Language

Signifier: R + O + S + E

Signified: 🌹

Sign (Meaning): a rose

Myth

Signifier (Form): a rose

Signified (Concept): painful, beautiful love

Sign (Signification): The rose as a symbol for painful, beautiful love

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Culler, Jonathan. “The Linguistic Foundation.” Literary Theory: An Anthology. Ed. Rivkin, Julie and Ryan, Michael.

2nd ed. 2010.

          In this source, Culler lays the ground in Rivkin’s section Structuralism, Linguistics, Narratology; specifically, he introduces Saussure, the next author in the section and a father of structuralism. The central topic of Culler’s mini-essay is meaning. He says that meaning is derived from a  set of underlying cultural norm and discrimination. My favorite quote from this section illustrates this point perfectly and with a little giggle too: “where there are two posts one can kick a ball between them but one can score a goal only within a certain institutionalized framework.”

          The second point of his essay is that there is a distinction between language as a system (a set of rules) and the actual manifestation of that system as speech or other acts of language, i.e. there is a distinction between rule and behavior. Not only is there a distinction, but there is also space between the rule and the behavior, which Culler calls a “gap.” What he means is that what a rule says an individual should do is not always what the individual will do, and that in this gap “is a space of potential meaning.” His example is a hypothetical club where members are not allowed to step on cracks in the pavement. In theory though, someone could step on a crack, i.e. they could act within the “gap.” The meaning of working within the gap is that this individual is not in compliance with the club and are thus an alien to them and they an alien to the individual. Were there no gap, there would be space for meaning and thus no reason for the club to exist. Notice though, that even though there may be a gap, the rule still exists. Culler’s example: promises are broken all the time, but the rule still stands that one shouldn’t break promises.

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de Saussure, Ferdinand. “Course in General Linguistics.” Literary Theory: An Anthology. Ed. Rivkin, Julie and Ryan,

Michael. 2nd ed. 2010.

          Though published in 1916, this text still stands as a must-read in the world of structuralism and, according to Rivkin, is one of the most influential books of the 20th century. I’ll start the discussion of this text with a quote from Saussure: “[language] is the social side of speech, outside the individual who can never create nor modify it by himself; it exists only by virtue of a sort of contract signed by the members of a community.” Already I feel hints of my project seeping through, though not directly addressed.

          Quickly, Saussure jumps into his novel idea which later becomes established as the study of semiotics. He first defines some terms that will become commonplace in his writing and those of other prominent structuralists like Roland Barthes. The first term is the linguistic sign. It is composed of a concept and a sound image. The concept is the idea, the thing itself and the sound image is the representation of the concept. For example, take the word “rose.” Here the concept is the flower (a red, soft-petalled, thorny flower) and the sound image is the specific arrangement of the letters r, s, o, and e to create the written word “rose.” To simplify matters, Saussure calls the concept the signified and the sound image the signifier. He then says that the combination of these two things creates the sign. Just at the end of this section, Saussure lets the reader know that he is not completely satisfied with little excursion in onomastics, but that the names he has used are the best that he can think of. The exact words he uses to express this thought are not in any way central to the text, but resonate deeply (likely accidentally, whatever that means) with the central idea of my project. He says, “as regards [the term] sign, if I am satisfied with it, this is simply because I do not know of any word to replace it, the ordinary language suggesting no other.” He speaks of language as an entity on its own, capable of suggesting something to the individual who wields it. This was extremely exciting for me to read.

          Saussure later goes through an extended metaphor of language acting like a game of chess. I will not enumerate all of his points here, but just one, actually the only characteristic of language that he lists that does not look like chess. He says, “behind the pieces [of chess] is a player who intentionally shifts the pieces to suit their goal,” but that “behind language there is no such consciousness; she changes spontaneously.” I think, then, that my project begs the question, is this change really spontaneous? Two subsequent questions arise: 1) is it possible to “tug” at the fibers of language consciously? and 2) can language change itself?

 

Jacobson, Roman. “Two Aspects of Language.” Literary Theory: An Anthology. Ed. Rivkin, Julie and Ryan, Michael.

2nd ed. 2010.

          What I got from reading Jacobson was not what he was actually trying to convey. As it happened with Saussure, there was a small blurb which strangely connected with my project but which had almost nothing to do with Jacobson’s subject (metaphor vs. metonymy). In discussion of relevant writers, he says, “to be sure, the metonymical style in Uspenskij is obviously prompted by the prevailing literary canon of his time, late nineteenth-century ‘realism’.” We say things like this often: ‘you can see how this artist was influenced by X movement with their brushstrokes’ or ‘late some-century whatever-ism clearly influenced this author in the way they construct narrative.’

          This all makes me think of the agency of language. The linguistics era into which you are born will largely, if not entirely determine the way you speak, the literary works you create, how you create them, with what style, diction, etc. What does this have to do with the agency of language? It makes me think of our discussion of genesis when we were asking whether God has autonomy (or at least less agency) after you created humans with agency. Humans created language, so if it has agency, that of humans would obviously be limited in some way. If I could find a way in which language limits the agency of humans, would that be an indication that language itself has agency?? This kinda gets into a broader realm of questions. How/why does culture change? Where is the tension? More specifically, is there anything about language that restricts or aids the tide of cultural change?

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Expert Questions

Internal Expert Questions

Ms. Berryhill

  • What are your general thoughts on my project?

  • Do you see any connection with things that I have studied in the past?

  • Do you see any connections to your field of Latin or Roman history?

Dr. Holt

  • I imagine my questions will be quite spontaneous in nature as they have shown to be

DW

  • Are there any moments of scripture that come to your mind regarding my project?

  • Do you see any relevance of my project in a religious context?

  • What do you see could be the implications of linguistic agency from a religious standpoint?


External Expert Questions

Rosalind Ivanić

  • Do you think intertextuality is a valid example of linguistic agency/power?

  • Do you have any specific texts you could point to where you think this dynamic is particularly powerful or resonant?

  • What do you think the role of linguistic agency is in critical language awareness?

Project Narrative

Introduction

        Does language have power, or is it simply a tool that we use to exercise our own? Everyday, we wield words with purpose and precision, but could it be possible that those words have a power of their own, covertly affecting us as we use them? I speculate that language as we know it has agency and power in and of itself. That since having been crafted by humans, it has become an independent entity within the structure of self fashioning, thus possessing the potential for causing great change—much like man after having been created by God. There is a whirlwind of questions that this statement unleashes—e.g. How is this power manifested?; To what extent do we have control over language’s power?; More importantly, to what extent does language have power over us?; and so on. Given that we use language in virtually every aspect of our lives—and that without it, it is arguable progress would not be possible—I think we ought to have a better picture of the power dynamics underlying our interactions with it.
        I plan to reach for the literature first, combing through the thoughts of those before me who have wondered similar questions to my own. Already, I have dove into Rivkin, finding it extremely useful as in introduction to many of the ideas, and verbiage used to discuss them, that I will encounter. I also have a short list of authors queued up to read that were graciously suggested by one of Dr. Holt’s colleagues. I am still considering how I should direct my research after those readings, though I am sure the path will become clear to me as I get farther into the work.

 

Subject Matter Experts

Internal
Ms. Berryhill

  • I have been collaborating with her for quite a while now on linguistics. She was my independent study advisor for two consecutive years and has offered explosive insight into my questions and lines of thinking throughout the time I have been with her. She is incredibly knowledgeable about Latin and Roman History, which I think will add a nice historical flavor to my research. Moreover, she is just a downright good thinker who offers valuable perspective and questioning through her quasi-linguistic lens.

Dr. Holt

  • I just will not stop talking to Dr. Holt about my project! I am so grateful for all of the thinking that she has done with me so far and cannot wait to see the kinds of insights she brings and where our thinking will go in the future. She brings a wealth of knowledge and perspective to my topic, but more valuable than that, she understands what I am thinking and the direction I want to go in and knows how to guide me with sources and direction of thought.

DW

  • I began discussing my ideas, in brief, with him not long ago during a conversation I was having with Dr. Holt which he joined, much to my delight. I appreciated his thinking and participation tremendously, especially the religious angle through which he came at my questions. I think that his expertise with religion and his vast knowledge of scripture and rhetoric will pair nicely with the thinking that I’ll be doing.

External
Saussure (deceased)

  • Though no longer with us, he was a great academic of time. As the father of semiology, his connection to my project is quite apparent. Through this framework (the study of signs), he packages language and culture into one in the same, comprising the same fundamental elements and rules. From this established connection I think drawing connections between human power and that of language will be easier.

Rosalind Ivanić

  • She is a prominent figure in the linguistic world whose research is directed at questions parallel to mine. Specifically, she studies intertextuality (how one text shapes the meaning of another) and critical language awareness (the social, political, and ideological awareness of an individual with regards to the language they use). The former hits on the idea of the power of language as an entity independent of humans while the latter touches on my questions of power ownership and effectual realization of power in society.

Kristine Horner

  • Currently the Director of Luxembourg Studies, Horner dedicates much of her research to questions about minority languages, the voices of those people, and especially the role of language in politics. I think she would have some interesting and fresh perspective into my ideas.

 

Timeline

Feb 10 — Completed readings of Rivkin + the other suggested authors; have set up meetings 
with internal experts and sent emails to external experts
Feb 10 — Process Reflection 1
Feb 13 — Research Components Due (bibliography + explanations of conversations)
Spring Break — Cleaning up research (finishing last conversations maybe)
March 12 — Thesis + Outline Due
March 19 — Process Reflection 2
April 2 — Completed Draft
April 9 — Artifact Proposal (written) + Pitch (Verbal)
April 16 — Revised Written Piece
April 23 — Ready to Present Update on Artifact
May 4 — Portfolio Website (Capstone Portion + Written Piece)
May 11 — Reflection 3 + Complete Website
May 11-15 — Symposium Run-Throughs
May 18 — Reflection 4 (Symposium)

 

The Scholarly Conversation

Rosalind Ivanić and Kristine Horner are definitely the two people that are most relevant to my project for all of the aforementioned reasons.


Initial Thoughts

  • Clearly I think yes, language does have agency and power as an independent entity

  • I think that that power is greatly limited or augmented by the particular situations of those who use it. Similarly, I think that an individual’s intention and the language they have to carry it out can work in tandem with one or another or conflictingly... 

  • I think that intertextuality is going to be a very interesting avenue through which to pursue my ideas. I think that the phenomenon neatly detaches humans from the picture more than other perspectives

Process Reflection 1

  • What have you read to think and learn more about your topic and questions?

    • The Rivkin Literary Anthology has been an tremendous help! The selections​ from Saussure and Barthes have been particularly exciting and thought provoking

    • I have other authors queued up, such as Ivanić and Horner

  • Who do you plan to speak with internally? What do you hope to learn from these conversations? What is the first question you want to ask that person? The most important question you want to ask that person?

    • My primary internal expert will be Ms. Berryhill. The most important ​question I would like to ask her is how she interprets my project from a historical perspective, being an expert in Roman history and the Latin language. Generally speaking, I hope to gain some perspective on my project from my former independent study supervisor as she knows me quite well and will likely be able to pull in happenings from my earlier classes with her.

  • Who do you want to communicate with externally? What do you hope to learn from these conversations? What is the first question you want to ask that person? the most important question you want to ask that person?

    • My primary external expert is Rosalind Ivanić. She is considered one of the most prominent figures in her field â€‹of applied linguistics, so I am sure that she will be able to provide a unique, niche perspective. I would like to ask her about her study of intertextuality and how she thinks it relates the agency and power of language.

  • What are the next questions that will help you develop your thinking on your topic?

    • How is the agency of language manifested?​

    • How much power do humans have over language?

    • How much power does language have over humans?

  • What more do you need?

    • More time. Always more time. I need more time to read and think and develop my thoughts further. I am finding it hard to fit all the reading and thinking that I need ​to do into my life outside of class.

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