With the increasing exploration in discourse analysis, the line between linguistics and such fields as sociology, anthropology, and psychology can sometimes seem unclear. In this lecture given by Becker at the 1985 LSA/TESOL and NEH Institutes, he tackles the question, "If there is a linguistics in the humanities, if there is a humanities, what might it be and how might we do it and why would we want to do it in the first place?" (17).
Becker chooses then linguistics in the humanities as his particular. In choosing this path, he is not ignoring or disputing existing linguistics research, namely scientific linguistics, but he is undertaking a new challenge, one that cannot be covered in other branches of linguistics. His goal is to "Put the observer back into our knowledge. Put the knower back into the known" (20). In this sense, language, the observation of a language's specifics, and its application are one.
To illustrate, Becker uses his audience to generate examples. After performing a simple action on the stage, he then asks the audience to write down a description of what they saw. He asks volunteers to recite their examples. Because each sentence is different, he points out that people are driven to contrive lexical structures by such things as sentences, grammar, and form. Yet in using this structure, it is the very description of an act that makes it real. The act that Becker performed only becomes real through the audience's description of it; "language does not represent the world, or reflect it. Describing it reflects it" (24). Because language is an ongoing process (referred to by Becker as languaging), it is in a constant state of creation governed by a person's connection to the world.
Interaction itself with the world, however, does not guarantee particularity. Particularity is not happened upon easily; it is only achieved after much practice and repetition. After repeated exposure, one can notice particulars. Becker uses birds as an example. We hear their songs all around us, yet their songs are just noise until we learn their names and individual songs, a realization of "their particularity along with the language" (29).
Becker concludes that the reason for studying linguistics in the humanities is "to learn to converse with those we have difficulty conversing with." By learning the particularities of another culture and language, people are able to make discoveries about their own relationships with people. "It teaches me to respect them, not out of some abstract moral principle, but as the practical first step in having my own differences respected" (32). Thus by singling out the importance of particularity, Becker has explained the inextricable nature of understanding, observing, and applying language in our own lives.