ABSTRACT
Of increasing interest in sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology and socially-oriented studies of discourse is the role of language in constructing and constituting social realities. Beginning from the assumption that language is not a neutral and transparent re¯ection of the world, work within a variety of traditions (e.g., ethnography of communication, interactional sociolinguistics, critical discourse analysis, discursive psychology) has delineated the constitutive effects of linguistic forms. Duranti (1997: 214), for example, asserts that when speakers use language, they help constitute the reality they are trying to represent: `not only do certain expressions require an understanding of the surrounding world for their interpretation, they also actively shape the surrounding world.' Likewise, Hutchby and Woof®tt remark that in the very process of using language to designate and describe states of affairs in the world, speakers are actively `building the character' of those states (Hutchby and Woof®tt 1998: 228). To say that linguistic forms are constitutive elements of social realities is not to say that there is no reality beyond language; rather, the claim is that our experience of reality is mediated by language and the particular perspectives that it entails. Cameron (1992), for example, points to the androcentric nature of terms such as penetration, fuck, screw, lay, all of which turn heterosexual sex into something men do to women. Indeed, from a female perspective, penetration would be more appropriately encoded as enclosure, surrounding, or engul®ng. What becomes clear from `names' such as these is the extent to which language functions as an ideological ®lter on the world: language shapes or constructs our notions of reality rather than labelling that reality in any transparent and straightforward way.
