Page 131 - Sustainability Communication Interdisciplinary Perspectives and Theoritical Foundations

114 H. Siebert

Fig. 10.2 Versions of constructivism

our everyday language with its grammar and syntax is a collective memory, a
3
reservoir of a variety of social historical experience. Language is a construction of
reality and of social action. Language allows humans to find orientation and coordi-
nate action (Fig. 10.2).
Gergen shows “how the meaning of our words does not depend on the character-
istics of the world, but on their relationship to other words. Meaning first arises
within texts or languages” (Gergen 2002: 59). With its lyric poetry the romantic move-
ment was a major force in re-constructing the aesthetic quality of nature. A careful
interaction with nature can be expressed in language but there can also be a linguistic
environmental pollution. Language – as emphasized by social constructivism – does
not reproduce reality, it interprets and creates realities (one thinks of Hölderlin, Trakl
or Rilke). Language is closely related to communication and is an expression of
traditions and feelings (Arnold and Holzapfel 2008).
The boundaries of our language point to the boundaries of our world. That also
means that we must learn to speak about sustainability. The complexity of our lan-
guage and the complexity of our (ecological) environment are mutually dependent
on each other. Language contains visions of a socially and environmentally sustain-
able future. “As we describe and explain, so do we fashion our future” (Gergen
2002: 68). Gergen and Gergen (2003) thus pleads for a ‘narrative pedagogy’.
Biographical narratives are vivid and descriptive constructions and reconstructions
of realities. Narratives are social construction processes that not only require a
story-teller but also listeners who question, supplement and correct the story.
Narratives are social confirmation in that they link the individual and the unique
with the common, the consensual. Sustainability communication can be revived by
a new learning culture of social-ecological story-telling.

Conclusion

Constructivism is not a theory that explains how the world is created. Constructivism
is more a meta-theory that explains why the question as to the nature of the world
cannot be satisfactorily answered. Constructivism is thus – following Niklas

3 In German the expression Umgangssprache is revealing. We might loosely translate it as ‘interaction
language’, the language that we use to ‘deal’ with each other and with the world.