Niche Construction and the Politics of Language

Two recent practice-based conceptions of linguistic communication challenge the dominant “content-delivery” models. Beaver and Stanley’s The Politics of Language (2023) and Rouse’s Social Practices as Biological Niche Construction (2023) have different aims. Beaver and Stanley develop an account of linguistic meaning as affective and politically engaged. Rouse starts from evolutionary accounts of human ways of life to situate language within a more general, naturalistic account of social practices as forms of biological niche construction. Despite their different orientations, the two books can work together as a more compelling challenge to standard accounts of linguistic meaning and communication.