Experiencing speech: Insights from indigenous ideologies of language

What is the relationship between speech and experience? What is the experiential quality of speech? At first glance, these might seem like peculiar questions as speech and experience are inextricably tied together through habitual practices. The apparent inseparability of speech and experience renders such questions problematic for we cannot get beyond or outside of language by means of language alone. This article explores the ideological constitution of language as seen from the perspective of a remote group of Inuit hunters. It urges a more phenomenological approach to speech and experience. It is shown how moments of phenomenological awakening might help us understand better local indigenous ideologies of language and how this could shed light more generally on the relationship between experience and speech.