Language as social action: Gertrude Buck, the "Michigan School" of rhetoric, and pragmatist philosophy.

Publisher: Wiley Country of Publication: United States NLM ID: 18020010R Publication Model: Print Cited Medium: Internet ISSN: 1520-6696 (Electronic) Linking ISSN: 00225061 NLM ISO Abbreviation: J Hist Behav Sci Subsets: MEDLINE

Publication: New York : Wiley
Original Publication: [Brandon, Vt.]

Language* ; Philosophy*; Humans ; Female ; Michigan ; Communication ; Schools

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Gertrude Buck and collaborators developed a sociologically and pragmatist-informed approach to language that has been neglected in later scholarship. Buck approached the study of language from the standpoint of pragmatist functional psychology, which is indebted to John Dewey's pragmatism at the University of Michigan, and which views language as a normal, dynamic action of human organisms engaged in necessary cooperative relations with one another. Her approach overcomes the small-minded pragmatism that would criticize figurative or poetic language as impractical, and instead shows how figuration is essential to the particular ways in which language is action that conveys meaning to others and serves broader social functions. Buck's forgotten work helps overcome criticisms of the application of pragmatic action theory to language and literature, sketching how language structure may be explained on the basis of language as a natural social-communicative act, how figurative language is inherent in the normal act of communicating situated bodily experiences to others, and how rhetorical speech and writing contributes to participation in democratic social processes. This paper also indicates how Buck's work has been partially rediscovered in Composition Studies, as well as prefigures later reader-response esthetics and feminist analyses of language.
(© 2024 The Authors. Journal of The History of the Behavioral Sciences published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

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Keywords: Gertrude Buck; John Dewey; University of Michigan; Vassar College; communication; literature; metaphor; pragmatism; rhetoric

Date Created: 20240412 Date Completed: 20240415 Latest Revision: 20240415

20260130

10.1002/jhbs.22307

38607694