The Relevance of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and Martin Heidegger in Ethnomethodology:

A Primer in “Language” and “Being”

Abstract

Insights from different disciplines (e.g., linguistics, philosophy, literary
criticism and sociology) can be useful to conceptualize language both
as (1) a means or a set of tools used by the members of any speech
community to make sense of their concrete ontic everyday life; and (2)
a norm-based phenomenon meant for ideal competent language users
of a speech community. Martin Heidegger referred to language in many
of his talks and writing. However, it appears that he had a general view
about language – he was interested in the ontological properties of
language, not necessarily its ontic properties the way it is understood
by a linguist in his reference-grammar. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, on the
other hand, had a specific focus, Gikuyu, his mother tongue, while
theorizing about language. Ngũgĩ cannot however be essentialized
as an out and out ethno-nationalist. His approach towards language
should rather be seen as his advocacy for “the primacy” of mother
tongue in building the worldviews of an individual. At the same time,
language for Ngũgĩ was a site for struggle with specific historical
nuances and consequences. His creative work in Gikuyu and critical
work in English was already a message to the world that he was not
fighting against a specific language but the languages of the empires
– French, Portuguese or English, and their hegemonic presence in
Africa. The idea of language developed by both Heidegger and
Ngũgĩ have shaped ethnomethodology (and conversation analysis),
a sociological approach to language, developed by Harold Garfinkel.
For an ethnomethodologist, the use of language by the members of
a speech community is done locally, and endogenously, as members’
work. Ngũgĩ and Heidegger, although they had entirely different
political projects in mind, share some common grounds on “language
as the house of being” and thus help widen an ethnomethodologist’s
views of language.