23. From geographical and social boundaries to epistemic breaks

What is it about?

Languages are difficult objects − constructed, reconstructed, and functionalized depending on communicative needs, scientific knowledge, and our social and political environment. These objects are always recognized, never denied, and are considered obvious. They are predetermined social and cognitive artefacts, made and used by humans − roaming animals with a strong tendency to band together around a community structure, and to continuously redefine their space and rules of procedure, thereby creating and manipulating boundaries. Given the link between society, politics, and geography, it becomes possible to examine the effects of the social, political, geographical and other boundaries in languages and to study them from these viewpoints. I therefore devote some space to the notions of ‘boundary’ and ‘contact’, which, despite the apparent obviousness of our intuitive understanding, mask and retain a tremendous degree of complexity. I first examine the social and political activities of multilingual communities, where the issue of linguistic boundaries can be significant. I then consider some of our linguistic practices when we interact in conversations, and develop strategies pertaining to linguistic boundaries which, implicitly or explicitly, we recognize, establish, or erase. I conclude by considering the perspective of descriptors as a working account for the observed facts; we shall see that the effects of establishing the boundaries they observe, and those which they introduce, have significant consequences.

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Why is it important?

Mastering and delimiting boundaries are necessary for defining what is mean- ingful for us, since much of our activity is based on recognizing distinctions. In our daily lives, we spend time identifying boundaries, implementing them, calling them into question, and/or confirming them, i.e. examining their dynamics, their functionalities, their impact, the ways they (we) enable us (them) to (re)structure and understand the world around us. They are at once a constituent part and the object of both our ordinary activities and our intellectual constructs. We necessarily take them into account. Is this true for language? Issues of linguistic boundaries, and phenomena linked to contact, provide relevant material. Indeed, languages are inside us, they necessarily exist in our minds individually and collectively, but they are also outside us, materialized in the utterances we exchange, omnipresent in the explicit and implicit content of our discourse, conversations, and literary output.