Language and social knowledge

Abstract

In this piece, I argue that a heightened attention to language in Reed’s (2011) interpretive epistemic mode will help further theorizing of the relationship between meaning and the social, and hence strengthen the case for interpretation. Reed’s (2011) framework of ‘landscapes of meaning’ would benefit from weaving in the significance of language to meaning-making: both because it would make room for variations in landscapes across (linguistic) space, but also because it would incorporate an understanding of language, and therefore interpretation, as a practical and historically changing activity. Finally, I suggest that paying attention to the uneven travel of language issues a productive challenge to the analytical distinction Reed maintains between the normative and the interpretive epistemic modes, given that not every epistemic mode is seen as equally legitimate in relation to dominant forms of making sense of the world, and given that subjects do not have equal access to interpretive landscapes.