Oh, the particularities of Texas . . .

1. What is a linguistics of particularity? It starts with the difference between synchronicity and diachroncity, where synchronicity deals with what is the same in language and diachronicity seeks to find what is different (the history). A ligusitics of particularity, and interpretive liguistics, has yet to appear according to Becker, 73. Interpretive linguistics helps us to understand much more than language--it helps us understand the world around us and the people who live in it, which is much more useful than understanding language. The particularity comes from text-in-context. Becker advocates going backwards in translation, retracing the glossing and the labeling and looking for what has been added and taken out--the exurberances and the deficiencies (213). He also advocates an emic understanding of the texts, which means looking at the text from the point of view of an insider, as advocated by Pike (213). At the level of the particular we have an interplay of systems (229), including "a system of systems, multiply constrained by the demands of structure, of genre (prior texts), of interpersonal relations, and of a construed natural world. This interplay of systems is quite particular and cannot be seen or described apart from particular contexts. The interaction of these constraints happens only at the level of the particular." Then what I find expecially telling, he finishes by saying, "Only particular uttereances have speakers, hearers, times, places, worlds--the irreducible conditions of their existence. Particularity, finally, is the source of a philologist's rigor" (229).

2. Modern philology looks at more than just the linguistics. It looks at the contextual relations and becomes a linguistics of particularities. "By contextual relations I mean the relations of any given text (oral or written, larger or smaller) to the intentionality of the people who shape and receive it, to the prior texts it evokes in their memories, to the natural world outside of language that it constitutes and presupposes, to the larger text it may be a part of, to the medium that forms it, and even to the kind of silence that frames it. All of these together shape the particularity of any bit of language one may study (Becker 213). This amazes and excites me about the study of language--that it includes the understanding of the people who developed and spoke it and what they intended by it. To me this includes what little children say, the language that each generation of teenagers speak, what we "speak" in our Church, the language developed within families, etc. It opens a wonderful door to PEOPLE, the Lord's children.

3. A bit of overlap here, but by having a way to understand what is "meant" by literature--what the contexts are teaching us--we also can understand the people who gave it and received it. I think I've learned that literature becomes more than a text, it becomes a heart and a mind.

From Evie in Texas. Thanks everyone for your help. The baptism and family gathering was important. I held this granddaughter when she was a week old and saw the generations in her-- my mother, my grandmother. I believe they knew her and accompanied her in her journey here. As she was baptized, that image returned to my mind, and realizing that she had now made convenants that would help her to return, I was also aware that there was rejoicing on both sides of the veil. Sorry I could not be with you all today--I was unable to change my flight to return earlier--some Skywest/Delta thing. Bye for now--Evie