Daily Archives: April 21, 2026

Relational Language Index (RLI): A Tool for Mapping Ontological Speech Patterns

Posted on April 21, 2026 by nathanalbright

Purpose: The RLI assesses how a speaker linguistically constructs persons in their life—whether they refer to others through enduring relational categories (mother, brother, husband, boss) or through neutral, detached, or purely functional descriptors (“that individual,” “the person I live with,” … Continue reading →

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When a Father Becomes “That Person”

Posted on April 21, 2026 by nathanalbright

I was in the next room, and I wish I had not been. A man in his mid-forties was talking with his mother about a disagreement he had had with his father over whether to wash the roof with chemicals. … Continue reading →

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Speech as Ontology: How Relational and Agent-Centered Language Encode Social Reality

Posted on April 21, 2026 by nathanalbright

Abstract Ordinary speech about persons is not metaphysically inert. The grammatical and lexical choices speakers make when referring to parents, spouses, colleagues, and strangers encode competing ontologies of the human person. This paper distinguishes two such ontologies—a relational ontology, in … Continue reading →

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Before We Speak of People: On the Ontology of Relationship in Everyday Language

Posted on April 21, 2026 by nathanalbright

I. The Words Beneath the Words Listen, for a moment, to an ordinary conversation. A woman at the next table is telling her friend about her week. She mentions her manager, her daughter, her landlord, a neighbor she waved at … Continue reading →

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