| Chapter 1: | A Meeting Observed |
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Chapter 1
A Meeting Observed
Alcoholics Anonymous: ‘Talking the Talk’
It is said that talk, like the head of the Roman god of gates and doorways, Janus, faces two directions simultaneously, both outward and inward; it performs at the point of interface between the individual and the social. It is through talk that we project images of ourselves inward to ourselves and outward to the world out there. Though we talk as individuals, we use words that have acquired their meanings through other people’s mouths and ears. We cannot claim ownership of words; we share them with our fellows and merely borrow them to suit our purposes, and these purposes are in part determined by how they have previously been used. Yet it is mainly through this common store of words (i.e., language) that we assume and display the various interactive stances that place us in the social world and make us what we are in the eyes of others. Furthermore, because we draw our sense of self from our social- and inter-relational selves, what we are in the eyes of others is reflected in our own eyes.