You Can Only Recycle Lingo-Plastic: An Introduction to Plasto-Linguistics
Owing much to Baudrillard’s Simulacra, lingo-plastics are constructions of language which are irremovable from their linguistic environment once introduced. Where some explanations of human perspectives/descriptions of ‘nature’ may present an arbitrary yet clear linguistic demarcation between ‘human’ and ‘nature’, plasto-linguistics presents the relationship between language and the natural as one in which language enframes nature temporarily. Plasto-linguistics presents the signifier as only temporarily able to enframe its signified with the signified eventually either enveloping the signifier as it grows beyond its containment or severing under the tension of the synthetic Gestell. For example, picture a small fish swimming into a plastic ring of rubbish which perfectly surrounds the fish. At first, the fish and the ring exist without much obvious issue, the ring sits (somewhat) comfortably around the fish and we observe that the fish is not harmed by such containment. However, as the fish grows it begins to bulge around the inflexible plastic ring until, eventually, the fish is severed in half or the ring is enveloped by the bulging sides. Plasto-linguistics sees language much like the fish and the plastic ring; signifiers are rigid constructions which either destroy our ability to perceive the signified in its entirety or they become contained within the signified itself so as to be indistinguishable from it having fundamentally changed the signified. Such is how plasto-linguistics positions language: the ring, the signifier; the fish, the signified.
The concept of lingo-plastic describes how language will create bonds between linguistic elements so as to manufacture linguistic polymers which do not degrade within their linguistic environments. For instance, much as plastic itself is made of myriad bonded chemical elements which in isolation are temporary, so too do innocuous individual linguistic elements (such as nouns, verbs, rhetorical devices etc.) come together to create linguistic perpetuity. Further, that which is constructed using lingo-plastics (e.g., ideologies, identities, perceptions) do not become the ‘real’ objects which they describe. Instead, they remain, like a plastic house plant, the material of their construction (lingo-plastic) merely aping reality. Where a signified may breakdown under tension, the signifier resists and, in the case of lingo-plastics, the signifier will not only endure but pollute any linguistic environment it comes into contact with; eventually, lingo-plastics become so pervasive that they can be found in all linguistic environments at a micro-level.
Once lingo-plastics pollute a linguistic environment, they are unable to be removed as the linguistic cleaning agents themselves contain lingo-plastics. To conceptualise this, consider the Tide pod, a laundry detergent contained within a ‘bio-degradable’ plastic soft-shell. Consider also that the plastic of the tide pod only degrades under very specific conditions and there is no guarantee it will do so during your wash and, so, you wash your clothes and merely perceive that they are clean. However, your newly ‘clean’ clothes are now washed through with plastic, the fabrics now unable to be rid of the plastic enmeshed within. No matter how often you wash your clothes, the plastics will remain or, at least, replenish. Lingo-plastics operate in an identical manner: once lingo-plastics begin to pervade language, they become the way in which we construct language. For example, we craft language based on our inaccurate perceptions and then use said language to shape our ideologies. Then, through the frame of our now 'clearly' defined ideologies, we attempt to reshape our languages to account for our inaccurate perceptions. This loop is inescapable, the cycle cannot be broken from within itself for all of it is what it was originally made from: lingo-plastics. When we attempt to rid our languages, and therefore our perceptions and societies, of harmful ‘synthetic’ ideologies we wash them through with a language containing the very lingo-plastics we are attempting to remove. Our signifiers may appear to us as the signified however this is merely the ‘illusion of the plastic plant’ and to invoke any signifier in a lingo-plastic environment is to recall and reassert its lingo-plastic properties. Wearing down a lingo-plastic so as to be imperceptible only exacerbates the issue as, much like micro-plastics pervade all bodies and environments, shrinking lingo-plastics down to imperceptible levels only betters their ability to pervade language/ideologies. This is a fundamental trait of the lingo-plastic, it may never be truly broken down, it may only be recycled. However, that we will never rid ourselves of the lingo-plastic is not a pessimistic position for as plastic may be melted down so too may the lingo-plastic take on a new form when pressed into new moulds. Although, we should not mistake this reshaping for a removal…