Locating Our Language - Contracts

By thinking and speaking in economic metaphors, we, by the very force of our use of those terms, begin to see our world as contractural. If we think about it we are surrounded by contractual relationships - our homes, our cars, our jobs, etc. We buy products on the basis of contracts. A key component of capitalism is the formation of value-laden contractual relationships (labor, materials, shipping, retail, service) - hopefully by now we see that as the reigning perspective of the US. In general businesses work through contracts to provide goods, that is in a way that matches up the demand (and that is the valid demand or those consumers with the money to buy) with a particular product. That purchase is based on both an express and an implied contract as we are exchanging value for value. (at some point I believe there is a rant to be posted about corporations and business and capitalism but need to think about it more)

There were some Enlightenment thinkers, Hobbes and Locke and others who worked up a theory - that society was built on a social contract. The idea actually goes all the way back to the Greek philosopher, Plato. In essence the people give up some of their rights to a government in order to form a working society and nation. So we live our lives in a web of interrelated agreements, like speed limits and such things.

So it seems to me it is not a difficult step to see that we interpret and interact with our world as a series of contracts. Linking this with some of the people I cited earlier in the blog, Hayakawa for instance, recall our speaking shapes our thinking and Lackoff and Johnson how our conceptual frameworks govern how we speak and interact with others, the conclusion comes out that economic metaphor and consequently contractual understanding is the major way we live. As well, this comes into non-economic aspects of our lives. As a parent have you struck a deal with your children to take out the garbage, or whatever chore, in exchange for an allowance, or in disciplining them, grounding or taking away privileges? On a more personal level, how many people look at their marriages as a contract? That is how often do you hear, he, or she, is not the person I married (not what I was expecting in the bargain if you will) or something similar with the next step being divorce? (another rant is coming on the term covenant marriage but that is for down the road) And how about sexual relationships? Particularly between unmarried people. The relationship is for the physical at the moment and does not include the possibility of pregnancy. I hope to focus a little more on this issue as this blog moves on.

There was a well known sociologist, Virginia Held, in Feminist Morality: Transforming Culture, Society and Politics, at 193 who said "contemporary western society is in the grip of contractual thinking. Realities are interpreted in contractual terms and goals are formulated in terms of rational contracts." Held goes on in her book to tie this up, at 194 "To see contractual relations between self-interested or mutually disinterested individuals as constituting a paradigm of human relations is to take a certain historically specific concept, economic man, as representative of humanity."

So I guess wow is the appropriate reaction. Our language is dominated by economic metaphors, and we conceive, and interact with, our world as a series of contracts.