"Life in the mouth" [2019] ELECD 1378; in Broekman, M. Jan (ed), "Rethinking Law and Language" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2019) 68

Book Title: Rethinking Law and Language

Editor(s): Broekman, M. Jan

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Section: INTERMEZZO 3

Section Title: Life in the mouth

Number of pages: 2

Extract:

INTERMEZZO 3



Life in the mouth


The monsters of the deep sea, the Leviathan included, as well as the
Great Whale and others (find them by name), did not eat their prey. The
prey's life unfolds in specific manners in the mouth of the monster. If
that had been different, Job would not have survived. But the conver-
sation has to go on! In the stomach, any conversation would be
impossible due to lack of oxygen. What does this mean? At least one
important observation is that the monsters are as strongly physically
involved in language as speech, that is, as parole, as activity beyond the
Speaker­Hearer Model. Life in the Mouth (of the monster) is a meta-
phorical narrative on language beyond the Speaker­Hearer Model!
Do we understand?

Who can open the doors of his face,
With his terrible teeth all around?
His rows of scales are his pride,
Shut up tightly as with a seal;
One is so near another
That no air can come between them;
They are joined one to another,
They stick together and cannot be parted.
(Job 41: 14­18)1

What comes out of the mouth must be understandable and have the form
of life that enables lingual communication. Is this too strange a require-
ment for a monster?


1 New King James Bible, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville 1990.
 Life in the mouth 69

Note how exceptional Jonah's story is. He cried "out of the belly of
Sheol" and ...