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A gilded cage is still a cage

'Clinical' is a word that is part of the framework and the furniture of my job as a Speech and Language Therapist (SLT). It trips off the tongue of colleagues without question and populates documents, policies and procedures. Yet, I wonder, in all its commonplace and everyday presence, do people ever really stand back to think about what that word actually implies? Here are two definitions from the Cambridge English Online Dictionary clinical  adjective   used to refer to medical work or teaching that relates to the examination and treatment of ill people expressing no emotion or feelings; showing no character and warmt h In reading these definitions I feel like I want to scream loudly and break free from those words, that box that contains my working life. For all the talk of  care, closeness and individual support  by my professional body, the term  clinical  remains a gilded cage. A cage because these are the words and meanings that frame my day-to-...
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The rhizomic heritage of languaging and communication


Weeding in my garden this weekend, I was struck by the lack of borders shown by the roots of the ground elder I was chasing. Were they aware of the border between my garden and that of my neighbour? No, they were evidently not. The transitory, indiscriminate, and notional boundary of control, posed by the fence line, was of no importance or consequence. The imposition of rule and order was irrelevant for these plants to thrive. This got me thinking about languaging and communication.

 

All the rules and borders and impositions and standards may be there on the surface, yet underneath, languaging and communication just keep on being. Digging deep I saw too all the multitude of roots of the plant, the big ones, the fine ones, in all directions and at varying depths. This was expansive. Communication and language are equally expansive; multi-modal and multi-temporal. Their exact medium or mode fits the environment. Languaging and communication flourish most naturally in understanding spaces, where left to just be, and not subjugated to false levels of control.

 

To see the beauty of languaging and communication we just need to step away from the borders, allow ourselves permission and freedom to embrace all possibilities, rather than stringently adhering only to the narrowest bandwidth of human experience.

 

I daresay I haven't got all the roots of the ground elder. I'm pretty sure it will come back. My own rule and order is likely to be bested. Nature will find a way. When we stop seeing ourselves as being in control, and realise it is being part of and joining in with the experience that matters, we see too that communication and language were never really static, despite being held to account in dictionaries and grammars. Communication and language have always been moving and living experiences, open to innovation and creativity at any point, and by anyone. How can we control and label something that at its heart simply cannot be contained? We cannot!

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