This essay is not about what love is. It is about what self-ascriptions of love do. People typically self-ascribe romantic love when a nexus of feelings, beliefs, attitudes, values, commitments, experiences, and personal histories matches their conception of romantic love. But what shapes this conception? And (how) can we adjudicate amongst conflicting conceptions? Self-ascriptions of love do not merely describe the underlying nexus of attitudes and beliefs. They also change it. This essay describes how conceptions of love affect romantic experience. I limn distinctions between love and obsessive infatuation and explore ways language can cultivate queer romantic preferences. Since conceptions of love are shaped, often implicitly, by terms available in one’s linguistic community, the resulting nexus of concepts and conceptions manifests linguistic luck. I suggest ways we might sculpt the language of love to better understand—and change—ourselves. Love can help us flourish and so can our “love” language.
Gardiner, Georgi. We Forge the Conditions of Love
2023, In Carlos Montemayor & Abrol Fairweather (eds.), Linguistic Luck: Safeguards and Threats to Linguistic Communication. Oxford University Press, pp. 279–314.
Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Georgi Gardiner
Abstract:
Comment: This paper discusses controversial ideas that may apply to student's lived experience of love, infatuation, and sexuality. The essay can be taught in two parts: Sections 1-7 for one lesson, and sections 8-13 for the following lesson. Sections 5 & 6 (on sexuality) can be skipped or given their own lesson. Those sections are especially controversial and can be used to ceate an in-class debate. Gardiner has a webpage, podcasts, and cheat sheet for teaching this essay. (See her website.)