To what extent is who(m) you’re allowed to love analogous to syntactic structure?

In this episode I explore the idea that human beings, in initiating themselves into language, surrender the higher consciousness that the rest of the non-human world enjoys.

This is a problem when it comes to love. If we see the world in terms of nouns, verbs, adjectives and prepositions, then love becomes part of a transitive syntactical arrangement which requires a subject that is separate from an object.

But it’s worth considering the distinct pleasure of separation. It makes it possible to experience the uniqueness of being loved, of being unknown, of being a mystery. As I always say, intimacy is embedded in the structure of language.

The research I discuss comes from Chapter 8 of The Routledge Handbook of Language, Gender, and Sexuality. You can get a copy from Sheffield Hallam University’s institutional repository.

Here are the transcripts.

The story I read is ‘A glimpse.’

Check out my new free course, Grammar for Dreamers. Check out my old free course, Writing through the Lens of Language.

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