Language and Social Construction

Nominalism is often juxtaposed to realism as binary opposites, but clearly nominalism stands opposite to essentialism, not realism. Nominalism is the theory of language that insists we name things, not that we define them. How could one define democracy, liberty, duty, freedom, religion, etc.? We cannot. But we name an idea that has a cluster of associations. Nominalism, therefore, is short-hand for naming particular objects (things) or clusters of associations (ideas), not for defining such things or associations. Definitions, conversely, require "essential properties," which are always hopelessly elusive. We name "things" and "ideas," and yet, the "essentialist defining" persists, as if "red" has an eternal essence that transcends all particulars. Only the color named is useful, it's definition elusive, it's essence bogus.

Such linguistic insights help us to understand our language, and how it forms our view of ourselves and our worlds. As social constructivism has demonstrated, "all knowledge, including the most basic, taken-for-granted common sense knowledge of everyday reality, is derived from and maintained by how and when people interact, they do so with the understanding that their respective perceptions of reality are related, and as they act upon this understanding their common knowledge of reality becomes reinforced. Since this common sense knowledge is negotiated by people, human typifications, significations, institutions come to be presented as part of an objective reality" (link). Perhaps John Searle put it most succinct: Social knowledge is ontologically subjective but epistemologically objective. (See, John Searle, The Construction of Social Reality and also Mind, Language, and Society.)

The post-modernist social-constructivists take the insight to its illogical extreme (i.e., reductionistic), by insisting nothing is real, everything is socially-constructed, and therefore all is a convention, at best, or an illusion. Wrong! Rocks, people, trains, etc. are indeed real concrete particulars, they are not "conventions" or "entirely socially-constructed." How we talk about rocks, people, trains, etc., is indeed socially-constructed. That is the insight that nominalism and "weak" social constructionism, like Searle's, are suggesting. The other insight is that linguistic use helps to form that socially-constructed reality, by a "feedback" loop. To illustrate some of the concerns that nominalists and social constructionists consider problematic, I'll address some of my favorite nonsense, as a case in point.

The Cult of Therapy created the neologism "homosexual" in the 19th C. If a human being could be "homosexual," the Cult of Therapy might have had a case for claiming him/her "pathological" and in need of a "cure." Unfortunately for the Cult, one cannot be "homosexual," an oxymoronic neologism. "Homo" means "same," and sexual means "reproduction by male and female members of the species." Obviously, "homo" cannot be "sexual." The disease is with the word the Cult of Therapy had crafted, because no such concept is coherent, much less applicable to individuals. If, and I stress if, "homosexual" was used nominalistically, such as "gay," then the use of the name for a particular constellation of associations would not be egregious. It would have simply been a "placemarker." But "homosexual" was coined and defined by the Cult to mean an incoherency, which then was pathologicized, and claimed curable.

When Gay Liberation demanded "evidence" of a "homosexual pathology and cure" in the 1970s, the Cult of Therapy democratically decided to vote "homosexual" as healthy, lest its lack of evidence, its oxymoronic neologism, and its unproven and unsuccessful "treatments" be exposed for lack of evidence. In 1973, the homosexually-sick became gay-healthy at the Cult's meeting one evening. Some call it "science by evasion." I still prefer to call it a Cult.

Now that 450+ species have been documented to have a same-sex attraction and behave in simulated sexual action, including H. sapiens, clearly no disorder, pathology, sickness, or dysfunction is plausible, much less a "cure" possible, unless Nature itself is pathological. (Natural law theorists, who persist in the Naturalistic Fallacy, better clue-in to Nature's wonders.)

The matter of "definitions," that individuals raise is a valid point. Why use words that CANNOT define an object or idea, or use an oxymoronic term to define individuals? That is precisely why "gay" replaced "homosexual." "Homosexual" is linguistic abuse (per J. L. Austin, the philosopher of language). No one is defined by words. We use words to name ourselves or point individuals out (by ostensive denotation) or to suggest associations. Wittgenstein's "use determines meaning" gives the proper direction of fit, and "homosexual" is unfit for linguistic use.

One "uses" the word "gay" to pick-out a constellation of features that are immensely variable, but at the root of the word is a same-sex attraction and same-sex simulated sexual activity. No one claims gays engage in coitus or intercourse, they are not sexual, but engage in simulated sexual activity, that words like "fuck" and "suck" capture (name). When gays "sex" each other, it's a metaphorical figure of speech, a nominalistic short-hand, for simulated sexual behavior, which Nature finds ubiquitous, and gays find pleasurable, healthy, and thoroughly natural.

To pursue an "ex-gay" strategy, therefore, is unnnatural, unhealthy, and unpleasurable. So, why would anyone be so inept to do so? Oh, I suppose aversion techniques, brainwashing, reparative techniques, repression, sublimation, can act to "off-set" Nature's doings, but it is clearly abnormal, pathological, and sick to try. Perhaps frustration, false-guilt, self-loathing, repressed feelings, self-delusions, etc. have some pay-off. But the pay-off is definitely "sick." It's a perversion of a natural endowment by artificial torture and Pavlov's operant conditioning to subvert nature for some metaphysical ideal that is merely "a face in the clouds," an illusion, a fantasy, a diversion, and other misdirections. The "evidence" overwhelmingly demonstrates an inordinately-high ex-gay recidivism into natural gay expressions.

Using such words as "homosexual," and employing such "techniques," are socially-constructed to demonize, penalize, pathologize, denaturalize, etc., what is in truth thoroughly commonplace, and while the Cult intended to "define," to construct an "essence," to "pathologize," to proffer "cures," its stigmatic and oxymornic neologism only names a cluster of associations, including those just mentioned, all of which are far off base. Thus, "gays" baptized a new word with other, more endearing associations that lacked the pejorative, oxymoronic sense of the Cult's use of "homosexual." Similarly, Queer Theorists resurrected the use of the word "queer" to use in defiance, to destigmatize, to flaunt. The only problem with that strategy, is that "queer" is associated with "oddness," and many gays do not think themselves "odd, queer" or otherwise. And because "queer" is associated with a pejorative sense, that has no actual associations with what we commonly intend to denotate with "gay," it only adds to the socially-constructed abuse of a class of individuals. The irony is that Queer Theorists are post-modern reductionists who insist they can "reconstruct reality," when social-construction structured them.

Like the Cult of Therapy, the Metaphysicians of Mind, and the Deity Peddlers, it's all quite senseless, not simply a "linguistic" abuse, to misuse language or to pursue an ex-gay strategy. When ex-gay recidivism occurs, hopefully the "damage" done by these socially-constructed abuses will recede into history, but some folk are really damaged for life. For what? Defining the preposterous into something non-existent?