Linguistic Responsibility by Cyril Welch (review)

HUMANITIES 221 and writers (with the exception of Mandryka and Ivahk) are well represented in the anthology. Short poems prevail, but there are also longer verse narratives. Besides poetry and prose, including fragments from novels, some socio-historical writing is also included along with one philosophical piece by Dmytro Kozij. Altogether, some twenty-nine authors, not counting those who wrote in English, vividly present a panoramic picture of the widespread and vibrant Ukrainian writing in Canada. The book has an index - an alphabetical listing of titles and first lines, including original names of translated works. (YAR SLAVUTYCH) Cyril Welch. Linguistic Responsibility Sono Nis Press. 400. $19.95 The question of linguistic responsibility arises when we ask how we can succeed in saying what we want to say and still somehow fail to say what does justice to the human condition in view of the various distorting interpretations of it with which we are surrounded. Welch characterizes the 'pristine' human condition as absorption in some kind of labour in which things, tools, other people are merely presented as being 'at hand,' requiring a response, or surge, together with an anticipation of what will be presented next. The language of the human condition, ordinary language in use, situates us in a context, prior to any reflection on the way we are situated there. Everyday language is 'our mother tongue,' but our father tongue is speech. Language 'breaks out into speech' when we transcend our normal absorption in labour and reflect on it. Only then is our human condition revealed to us, and we then set out to describe, investigate, and categorize it. Absorbed labour is a necessary condition of 'revealment,' because only in labour is one doing something. But in order for reflection to occur, some defectiveness in what one is doing is required, whereby what one is doing first becomes noticeable. When we are repelled by our ordinary labour, language breaks into speech in the form of complaint. This 'speech of presentation' is the first mode of transcendence of our pristine human condition. A second mode arises in connection with any instructional situation in which the focus is on the future. This is the speech of anticipation. We also break out into speech when we idealize: when we attempt to escape altogether from the givens of experience. This is the speech of 'pure surge.' The Western intellectual tradition has been characterized by the idealizing mode, Welch thinks, in the form of mathematics, formal logic, and the philosophies (e.g. Plato and Descartes ) which demand that responsible thought withdraw from the world as merely presented. When we transcend absorbed labour in any of these modes, we thereby 222 LETTERS IN CANADA 1988 withdraw from it, and the world is thus 'strongly concealed,' as soon as it is revealed. Concretion, however, is a 'strongly revealing' mode of transcendence, bringing presentation, surge, and anticipation together into a thematic unity. In concretion, ordinary absorbed labour becomes 'special,' as in a hobby, or in a labour that has been transformed into a true vocation. The speech of concretion is that of testimony, of bearing witness. Only here, according to Welch, does Truth emerge (as opposed to the 'correctness' or 'utility' of ordinary language). Only here do words really mean what they say, revealing 'the thinghood of things,' 'the selfhood of selves,' and our true vocational ground. Our linguistic responsibility, then, lies in achieving 'concrete speech' as speakers and writers; for us as readers itlies in learning to question and be questioned by the great writing of our Western heritage, which reveals the historicity of our human condition to us. Thus can one willingly take responsibility for, and affirm, that heritage. This is an intellectually and morally challenging book, though somewhat self-consciously 'important.' Welch's philosophical position is eclectic, but the general intellectual style is that of the late German romantic tradition as exemplified by Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Gadamer . Unlike most English-speaking philosophers writing in this tradition, Welch's book doesn't read as though it has been badly translated from German. Indeed, it is quite beautifully written, with interesting and provocative interpretations of Homer and Sophocles, Plato and Aristotle, Descartes and Kant, Thoreau and...