ABSTRACT
This chapter is primarily dedicated to critical musings on the use of notions of 'abstract' and 'concrete' in a range of language-related enquiries and the problems such notions entail for an understanding of the scope and potential of human action and intelligence and freedom. In mainstream linguistics and language-related disciplines, the janitorial perspective has long been one of the fundamental research methodologies, as is clear from C. Hutton's detailed examination of the linguist's deployment of the type-token relation. As Hutton explains: One way of characterizing the linguist's approach to language is to compare it with that of the hypothetical participants in a conversation. 'Concreteness' is about the dynamic connectivity and interdependence of things, as opposed to their abstract 'identity', and licences a suitably action-oriented 'logic'. Hutton's investigation of the type–token relationship in language study leads him to the further, intimately related, issue of the role of context in language use.
