While the grammar governing such sub- languages is, with
some exceptions, the grammar of the language from which they are
derived, the vocabulary is more appropriate to the subject
matter. Moreover, while sharing language conventions and the
general frame of language, these sub-languages project an
experience so particular that it cannot be properly understood
and interpreted without some translation and commentary. And
each commentary (on a law, a new scientific theory, a work of
art or poetry) is yet another insertion of a third, which
refers to the initial object sometimes so indirectly that the
relation might be difficult to track and the meaning is lost.
A similar process can be identified in our present relation to
the physical environment. Many things mediate between us and the
natural environment: our homes, clothes, the food processing
industry. Even natural artifacts, such as gardens, lakes, or
water channels, are a buffer against nature, an insertion between
us and nature. Constituted in our language are experiences of
survival and adaptation: the vocabulary of hunting, fishing,
agriculture, animal husbandry, coping with changes in weather
and climate, and coping with natural catastrophes such as floods
and earthquakes. The mediating function of language is different
here than on the production line.
Mediated practice leads to distributed knowledge along successive
or parallel mediations that are not at all literacy-based or
literacy-dependent.
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