Abstract

It is argued that language, fulfilling a communicative function, is not simply a self-sufficient tool that can be taken and used for pre-established purposes. In its use, language is intimately linked to the web of actions, situations, emotions, knowledge and beliefs in which speakers participate. Linguistic uses are presented that show that meaning is not something that is before the act of speaking with someone in a certain situation: it appears in the saying. Words can mean in this saying even the opposite of what is encoded in the dictionary; verbs can modify the schematic, grammatical meanings that they have conventionally, to adapt to the particular linguistic contour in which they are said. In this sense, language is a radically situated process. It is also distributed: it arises from the joint activity of those who participate in the enunciation. Men and women are constructing language in their verbal interaction in certain situations: their saying. Certainly, this saying is constructed from a shared linguistic heritage in which human activity has been sedimented: the lexical and grammatical treasure that constitutes the historical languages. However, the rules and conventional meanings of language do not exist, in principle, outside the human communicative activity, which is, finally, the alpha and the omega of a language that is continually being made.