> Craig,
I am someone who is now arguing that every communicative utterance partakes
of the ambiguity of metaphor. As relevant to the issue of how much
'sharing' of understanding goes on, you might be interested in my account of
the origin of language, which contains as an essential element of the
theory, the proposal that no speaker can ever share a perfect understanding
with a hearer, which entails that no word can ever match thought precisely.
My idea derives from the definition the anthropologist Gregory Bateson gives
of play.
See the website:
http://www.anthropoetics.ucla.edu/ap1401/
Edmond
Brian,
> I think that's a very useful clarification. Language and thought can be
> essentially linked without being identical.
> I was thinking about the way language allows us to separate a team from
> its members, a picture from its colors and shapes, music from its notes
> and rhythms, a road from its path and extent. But it would be hard to
> turn around and say that the picture isn't somehow formed by its colors
> and shapes, the music by its notes and rhythms, and so on. (Would
> context change that? Try putting a picture in a different light.)
> Some grammars tend to look at language as a formal system. In a purely
> formal system, with, let's say, machines talking to machines (a
> computer talking to a computer), ambiguity would be an unexpected
> problem. How could a computer "misunderstand" another computer? Only
> metaphorically, by analogy, would that make sense. But when I talk to
> another person, I expect the words to be interpreted, and I draw on all
> the shared experience, including the shared context of the statement.
> There are, in fact, context grounding elements built into the system:
> determiners, pronouns, finite auxiliaries, including the modals and
> their adjuncts, and so on. In other words, language is built to
> facilitate shared human understanding. Much of what it conveys would be
> irrelevant to a machine. And shared understanding is a hugely difficult
> process, fraught with perils and pitfalls. (What would a computer make
> of "peril" and "pitfall"? It has no fear of its own mortality, with the
> exception of Hal, of course, in 2001. But do we all share that
> reference?)
> That doesn't even begin to touch on the problem of deliberate
> misleading or holding back. If you waterboard me, will my words more
> closely reveal my thoughts?
> I think you're right. We can posit a deep link between language and
> thought without thinking of them as purely identical. It is hard for me
> to imagine human cognition without a shared human experience of the
> world. We find our way into that world through language. Our language
> evolves to make sense of that changing world.
>
> Craig
>
> Bob Yates said,
>>
>>> we discuss such sentences in a student text. If someone wants, I will
>>> discuss it in a further post.
>>
>> I'd be interested in reading that post, Bob.
>>
>> Meanwhile, can you clarify what you mean by "completely separate"? To me,
>> "completely separate" sounds like it means independent, parallel, without
>> links, even isolated--as if what we say bears no relation to what we
>> think. But I'm pretty sure that's not what you mean. Would "linked but
>> distinct" be an accurate paraphrase of what you have in mind?
>>
>> Near the other end of the spectrum, the concept that "language structures
>> our thinking" has to be distinguished from "language is identical to
>> thinking." Perhaps non-human animal thinking exists but is less structured
>> or differently structured than the thinking of language users. I assume
>> that the structure of my own thinking would change if I could no longer
>> form or receive words and sentences in my mind.
>>
>> Brian
>> ________________________________________
>> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
>> [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Robert Yates [[log in to unmask]]
>> Sent: Thursday, June 11, 2009 12:45 PM
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: Metaphors we don't live by
>>
>> Colleagues,
>>
>> I started my first reply on the metaphor string to suggest that there is
>> an alternative view from the one that language ³structures our thinking.²
>> I believe that language and thought are completely separate.
>>
>> (Actually, this is not a very bizarre idea. Imagine that you lost your
>> ability to say anything. Would you say you are incapable of thought? I
>> have several cats. They are unable to use language but it is clear they
>> ³think.² They know that certain sounds mean they will be fed and they
>> are learning a quick ³no² means to stop what they are doing.)
>>
>> I used the example of syntactic ambiguity to question the claim that
>> language structures are thinking. If that is the case, then it would
>> seem whenever we utter an ambiguous sentence, we are having both
>> thoughts at the same time. I donıt think that is the case. I cited the
>> example of a real headline:
>>
>> Puberty in girls begins earlier than thought
>>
>> I just donıt think the writer of that headline had both meanings in mind
>> when that headline was composed. As best as I can tell from the
>> following by Gregg Heacock, that is the implication of the following:
>>
>> "But, in my relating having, doing, and being to the past, present, and
>> future and to reality, imagination, and conceptualization is that
>> grammar encodes deep thought patterns. Teachers who belittle grammar
>> instruction have little idea of how important this discipline is to
>> shaping the mind. For language not only translates our thinking, it
>> structures our thinking."
>>
>> ******
>>
>> Craig Hancock is right about how, in normal conversations, we resolve
>> utterance that are ambiguous by reliance on context. He writes:
>>
>> ³I don't see any reason to infer . . . that language and thought are
>> "separate systems." "She was a lightweight" can mean so many things in
>> so many contexts. It can be a literal observation about weight or a
>> metaphoric observation about power or ability. Any sensible theory of
>> language needs to deal with this.²
>>
>> Descriptions of language deal with how particular utterances can be
>> ambiguous, but NO theory about the grammar of language can figure out
>> all of the possible contexts for determining the meaning of a particular
>> utterance. I think the passage above acknowledges that language must
>> necessarily be different from thought if context is crucial for
>> determining what a speaker means.
>>
>> Consider the following two exchanges and the ³meaning² of the string ³Is
>> the Pope Catholic?²
>>
>> Exchange I
>> A visiting Indian student to her American friend: Is the Pope Catholic?
>>
>> Exchange II
>> Wife to husband returning home late from work: Would you like a drink?
>> Husband: Is the Pope Catholic?
>>
>> In exchange I, the string ³Is the Pope Catholic² is a real question; in
>> exchange II, the string means ³yes.² Craig is right that context
>> determines these two meanings. That the exact same string of words can
>> have two separate meanings seems to me that ³language² and ³thought² are
>> very separate systems. Perhaps, he can provide an example that they
>> must be intimately connected.
>>
>> (For the best explanation I know to understand why those meanings are
>> different, see the work of Sperber and Wilson, Relevance Theory, which
>> is an elaboration of Paul Griceıs Cooperative Principle.)
>>
>> This discussion has implications for how we view our studentsı writing.
>> If we find an ambiguous sentence in a student text or a sentence that
>> makes no sense, do we think the studentıs thought is confused or do we
>> think the student has not recognized in another context the utterance
>> has a different meaning?
>>
>> This post is long. In a paper by Jim Kenkel and me that will be
>> appearing in Written Communication in October, we discuss such sentence
>> in a student text. If someone wants, I will discuss it in a further
>> post.
>>
>> Bob Yates, University of Central Missouri
>>
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