Carol,

 

Both Derrida’s statement and that of Bennett and Royle are put in such a way that they are automatically true if their terms are taken in particular ways – that is, if I define “text” broadly enough, then I can easily include the universe as I comprehend it, and “bound up with” is a phrase of such delightful flexibility that it can be taken however one wants it. I’m not saying this to argue that their positions are wrong; rather, I’m arguing that their statements don’t constitute arguments or evidence in and of themselves. To put it mildly, there’s an empirical problem with trying to prove – or disprove – the claim that no cognition exists without some involvement of language (for one thing, we’d have to define “cognition,” or even “thought,” and, well, throw that one out in a roomful of philosophers and watch what happens).

 

Derrida and many others were, I think, rightly reacting against a kind of default model of language in which it was assumed that thoughts were pre-linguistic, and simply encoded in language in order to be transmitted (the old “telephone” diagram from Saussure’s students’ notes). That approach leads to the standard “black box” model from engineering that underlies the way most linguistics textbooks still present the basics of the domain (although most carefully inform students that it’s an oversimplification and it’s only being used as a starting point). Saying that no cognition is extralinguistic is a classic case of trying to prove a negative – and I don’t think we even have to try. Saying that much thought is intralinguistic is all that’s necessary to establish that we should study those relationships.

 

 

Bill Spruiell

Dept. of English

Central Michigan University

 

 

 

Just to chime in on Johanna's point -- There's a kind of "envelope"
within which the relationship(s) between language and thought (or
language and perception) must lie. If language *determined* thought
(what used to be called the "strong form of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis)
we'd be unable to come up with concepts our language didn't already have
words for. That's obviously not the case.

On the other hand, if language had no influence on thought, it would be
very, very hard to explain why advertising companies devote so much time
and money to coming up with good product names, or why (to
non-vegetarians, at least) a "steak" sounds much more appetizing than "a
piece of cooked cow."

The work on color terminology, by the way, hasn't as much discredited
the SWH entirely as it has put sharp limits on it. Our color perception
is determined to a great extent by the biophysics of our perceptual
apparatus (people have three kinds of color sensors, each of which
"peaks" at a particular range of wavelengths) but *within* those limits,
language can have an effect.

Bill Spruiell
Dept. of English
Central Michigan University

-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Johanna Rubba
Sent: Monday, February 25, 2008 2:54 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Form and function (philosophy of language)

It's important to remember that Whorf was theorizing about _habitual_
thought that is influenced by language. He thought that some
languages reflected the physical world better than others. For
instance, in English, "lightning" is a noun, and we don't even have
an exclusive verb for it, but physically, it's an event or process
much more than a thing. He obviously didn't think that we are
irrevocably stuck in patterns of thought because of our language,
because his very recommendation was that we use other languages for
physical descriptions of the world, hence he had to believe that we
could modify our thoughts to fit the language we are using.

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis has been out of favor for a long time, but
numerous linguists are exploring it again and looking for some
empirical support for it. I have seen notices for conferences, for
example. I have not been following the developments, but it would be
interesting to see what is being discovered. I did review a paper for
Language which purported to show some Whorfian effect regarding
spatial orientation, which was a little more convincing than the work
on color, which has been discredited.

In Lakoff and Johnson's model of metaphorical thought, metaphor
precedes language -- that is, language reflects metaphorical thought;
it only creates it to the extent that particular metaphors are
propagated throughout a culture via its language. Some metaphors are
culture-specific, and some are (according to L & J) universal. Either
kind can influence how scientists analyze the world and how they
build models of it. Lakoff has a book (with a co-author) on the
metaphorical origins of mathematics, but I don't recall the title. A
cruise on his web page is likely to reveal it. L & J propose that
metaphor influences not only language, but behavior. For instance,
reifying time into units impels us to create things like hourly wages
and parking meters.

It's worth noting that L & J propose that we can change our thought
habits by adopting new metaphors, for instance "marriage is a
collaborative work of art" rather than traditional physical-bond
metaphors. Different metaphors can give a different spin on
phenomena, creating new linguistic metaphors and new habits of thought.

Dr. Johanna Rubba, Ph. D.
Associate Professor, Linguistics
Linguistics Minor Advisor
English Dept.
Cal Poly State University San Luis Obispo
San Luis Obispo, CA 93407
Ofc. tel. : 805-756-2184
Dept. tel.: 805-756-2596
Dept. fax: 805-756-6374
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
URL: cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba

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