Language as a Values‐realizing Activity: Caring, Acting, and Perceiving

Abstract

A problem for natural scientific accounts, psychology in particular, is the existence of value. An ecological account of values is reviewed and illustrated in three domains of research: carrying differing loads; negotiating social dilemmas involving agreement and disagreement; and timing the exposure of various visual presentations. Then it is applied in greater depth to the nature of language. As described and illustrated, values are ontological relationships that are neither subjective nor objective, but which constrain and obligate all significant animate activity physically, socially, and morally. As an embodied social activity, conversational dialogue is characterized in terms of values, pragmatics, and presence rather than in terms of syntactic and semantic rules. In particular the nature of dialogical arrays is explored, and the hypothesis that language is an action system, a perceptual system, and a caring system is explored. Language expands horizons and makes it possible for humans to realize their calling as culture makers and caretakers.

The Moral Ecology of Unstructured Speaking on Study Abroad: Finding Speaking Opportunities

“…This research takes seriously the statements from van Lier (2004) and Hodges (2015) regarding the value-laden nature of language use and demonstrates a framework for understanding the moral ecology of language learning. The analysis revealed that participants evaluated their participation in unstructured speaking by appealing to certain moral reference points that guided their efforts to find good speaking opportunities.…”

“…In Leo van Lier's (2004) discussion of an ecological perspective for language learning, he said that "there is no value-free or value-less language use" (p. 185). Steffensen and Kramsch (2017) repeated van Lier's statement and further referenced Bert Hodges (2015), who described "language as a valuesrealizing activity" (p. 712). These claims have deep implications for language learning research, but examples of empirical research that show what these implications are in practice have not yet materialized, even when similarly difficult and pivotal concepts have received increased attention from researchers in the past decade, such as agency (Brown, 2014;Jackson, 2011;Mercer, 2012;Xiao, 2014) or identity (Barkhuizen, 2017;Diao, 2017;Kinginger, 2015; see also Norton, 2013).…”

“…As "moral realism" suggests, values are as real as the practices that they constitute. From social psychology, Hodges (2015) concurs that values are "ontologically real demands, obligations, and opportunities" (p. 715), without which human activity would be shapeless and confused (for more on hermeneutic moral realism see Brinkmann, 2004;Slife & Yanchar, 2019).…”

“…In preparation for a similar discussion in the broader field of psychology, Brinkmann (2004, p. 58) cautioned: … granted that moral properties are an irreducible part of the human world … we must be particularly careful in first understanding this moral dimension, since moral properties very easily drop out of consideration, or become reduced to something they are not, when investigated with the tools of current psychological methodology. Bird et al (2021) outlined one way to understand the value-based or "moral dimension" of language learning by synthesizing insights from value-based approaches to language (Hodges, 2015) and learning (Yanchar, 2016). The three primary claims synthesized from these approaches are that (1) language learning has intrinsic goods, (2) participation in language learning requires balancing contextual demands to effectively realize these goods, and (3) the way someone balances these demands and goods constitutes taking a position relative to other possible positions.…”

The motivational role of affect in an ecological model

“…5. Language realizes values by creating, pausing, and modifying intention and will (Hodges, 2015). 6.…”