This unit gives you the opportunity to liven up your language, through writing and speaking, exploring ways of expressing the living, dynamic nature of integrative and transformative practice and experiencing the reverberation of meaning of which Bachelard speaks, with the outcome being “texts that are vital”. (Richardson)
We will commence this course by considering the ontological functions of language. We will examine the ancient system of rhetoric and how it is used to form the classic paradigms of our contemporary society. Using contemporary texts the persuasive power of rhetoric and its argumentative force will be demonstrated. We will then consider how our world has been invented with language, paying special attention to historical and contemporary social, political and psychological discourse. Words, especially in their normal usages, support and sustain the text as it is currently written (including the underlying cultural subtext).
In this unit we will also look at the origins of words and how their meanings have ‘slipped’, as well as words we have transplanted from one context to another, sometimes with catastrophic consequences. Further, we explore those times when we seem to have no language with which to describe a phenomenon, an experience or an insight. We will explore these times and spaces as epistemological silences and consider both the epistemology which makes this so and the possibilities for understanding those silences and ‘re-languaging’ them, finding words and ways to express oneself in these times. Writing traditionally ‘fixes thought on paper’, externalizing what is internal. We will explore writing as method, with ‘methodology’ inextricable from ‘experience’ and vice versa, so closely woven as to be indistinguishable. In assignments, you will be asked to reconnect with the auditory nature of words, letting your ‘self’ linger a little, wandering with the words, feeling their flow, fullness and fragility.