HOW WE MAKE SENSE OF (WHAT WE CALL) NATURE - Making Sense of Nature - page 21

Discourse and discourses
As many analysts have shown, discourse exists at two metaphorical levels
that, in practice, intertwine. First, it encompasses all of the major categories
and distinctions that serve to make 'reality' intelligible for any given society
or group of societies. This 'semantic grid' defines the parameters of what
is sayable and unsayable, thinkable and unthinkable, intelligible and non-
sense. Linguistic theorist Ferdinand de Saussure once famously called this
langue . For instance, in Western society it makes no sense to say that ships
walk, plants fly or grass thinks. For de Saussure, the signified-signifier-
referent connection is entirely arbitrary , even though it seems necessary to
those whose thoughts are conditioned by any given langue . Second, within
this 'grid' (discourse in the singular), we are free to create a myriad of dis-
courses (in the plural) - but only up to a point. As cultural critic Sara Mills
puts it, 'Discourse as a whole consists of regulated discourses' (1997). By this,
I take her to mean that any specific act of spoken, written or non-textual
communication must - if it's to make sense - conform to the prevalent
'rules' and 'norms' of language. 15 Thus, for all their differences in content
and style, the discourses used by Anglophone climatologists and organic
farmers (say) must observe the same semantic conventions. Otherwise, these
discourses would be unintelligible to non-specialists - literally a foreign
language.
Though it operates on and through individuals, a discourse is social in
the sense that it's a widely shared mindset and vocabulary - a sort of mental
architecture with many inhabitants occupying the same building but mov-
ing between different rooms in different ways, and with often different goals
in mind. Michael Frayn offer us an alternative metaphor: 'The established
usages of language', he argues, 'are part of the standing timber in the great
forest that surrounds us' (2007: 356). The verb 'to discourse' is thus crucially
related to discourse in both the mass and count noun senses: acts of commu-
nication between people are governed by inherited linguistic conventions at
both the 'meta' and more specific levels.
Discourses have histories and geographies, and thus are not homogenous
through time or across space (Williams rather brilliantly traced some of the
continuities and changes in Keywords (1976)). In the medium to long term,
their parameters and content are not set in stone - though at any given
moment in any given society they possess a seeming 'fixity'. Within this
apparent fixity, any given discourse, in the singular sense, can accommo-
date the development of myriad particular discourses (in the count noun
sense, akin to what de Saussure called parole or 'language in use'). These plu-
ral discourses are ' recurrent patterns of speaking or writing' (Cox, 2010: 63).
They posses a certain coherence and distinctiveness relative to other dis-
courses, or they may be colloquial everyday discourses, or very formal
and specialised ones. The latter are differentiated according to their aims,
their domain(s) of topical interest/concern, and their communicative style