Language games
In the spirit of perfecting non-timeliness, a discourse on the nature of human language.
Good idea Tyson, I think I just might...
Unfortunately, I have to disagree with Tyson's post. In reality, my own view is that language is indeed personal, based mainly on the fact that denying that language is personal, at least to some degree, requires one to deny the experience of being human--much like asking whether or not there is free-will, the question is essentially vacant. (Incidently, my view doesn't require unmediated access to concepts but that's another issue.) But let us suppose that language is radically social in the sense that Tyson proposes, which, if I correctly interpret it, holds that Society (note the big S) radically constrains the discourse through determining for any concept the array of concepts that may be considered connected to it.For example, Ugolin has no relationship to the word "Tetris-y" because in the network of concepts available to him, "Tetris-y" has no neighbors. Similarly, the sentence "Rock music expresses radical potential today" is senseless because it cannot be fitted into the network of concepts available to a modern American language user, or rather, it is contradicted by some large number of concepts in the network. An immediate counter to this claim is the following: Many people define "Rock music" to be, definitively, in the class of musics that express radical sentiment; subsequently, if this music does not do so, it is not Rock music. One can then say, naturally, that we must then live in a world bereft of Rock music utterly. I wonder. From here we enter into an argument of fact, which is not my desire for now. But I defy the big S. No, in fact, I deny the big S, at least, for anyone who does not watch MTV all the time. To start with, I would say that there is a vast number of sources, or nodes, or poles, or whatever, that articulate the social totality, each of which can be said to neighbor only a (strictly contained) part of the whole network. Moreover, the interaction of individuals with these poles is extremely idiosyncratic. Consequently, any given utterance must be considered relative to the semantic contexts of the utterer and the listener, which,if you like, are socially imposed (but which does not make them homogeneous). If the listener and speaker are both, in some way, bounded away from those poles which disembowel the sentence "Rock music expresses radical potential today," there is no reason to say that sentence actually lacks sense. The same argument relativizes and preserves the sense of the claim "I'm proud to be an American." On the other hand, I think Tyson had/has no issue with what I've claimed so far, so let me make one further claim. While the machinery of language may indeed be social, or socially determined, it is still the tool of individual humans, who surely retain the ability to try to understand a speaker's intended meaning and the right to hope/expect that a listener will do that. It doesn't matter what "Americanness" generally means. As a personal example, consider speaking with me; if I use a word in an apparently strange way--I might refer to "an algebra," or say something is "universal," or more subtly, I might use the word "structure" with a odd flavor--and if you cared to understand me, you would have to consider the fact that I study mathematics and ignore some alternative definitions. In the other direction, when a non-mathematician refers to "algebra" or "structure" or "universality," I'm (for the most part) able to put aside the mathematical notions. These are the sorts of things people really do...
Bottom line: Only some proper subclass of the Social Totality actually bears on any given utterrance.
Good idea Tyson, I think I just might...
Unfortunately, I have to disagree with Tyson's post. In reality, my own view is that language is indeed personal, based mainly on the fact that denying that language is personal, at least to some degree, requires one to deny the experience of being human--much like asking whether or not there is free-will, the question is essentially vacant. (Incidently, my view doesn't require unmediated access to concepts but that's another issue.) But let us suppose that language is radically social in the sense that Tyson proposes, which, if I correctly interpret it, holds that Society (note the big S) radically constrains the discourse through determining for any concept the array of concepts that may be considered connected to it.For example, Ugolin has no relationship to the word "Tetris-y" because in the network of concepts available to him, "Tetris-y" has no neighbors. Similarly, the sentence "Rock music expresses radical potential today" is senseless because it cannot be fitted into the network of concepts available to a modern American language user, or rather, it is contradicted by some large number of concepts in the network. An immediate counter to this claim is the following: Many people define "Rock music" to be, definitively, in the class of musics that express radical sentiment; subsequently, if this music does not do so, it is not Rock music. One can then say, naturally, that we must then live in a world bereft of Rock music utterly. I wonder. From here we enter into an argument of fact, which is not my desire for now. But I defy the big S. No, in fact, I deny the big S, at least, for anyone who does not watch MTV all the time. To start with, I would say that there is a vast number of sources, or nodes, or poles, or whatever, that articulate the social totality, each of which can be said to neighbor only a (strictly contained) part of the whole network. Moreover, the interaction of individuals with these poles is extremely idiosyncratic. Consequently, any given utterance must be considered relative to the semantic contexts of the utterer and the listener, which,if you like, are socially imposed (but which does not make them homogeneous). If the listener and speaker are both, in some way, bounded away from those poles which disembowel the sentence "Rock music expresses radical potential today," there is no reason to say that sentence actually lacks sense. The same argument relativizes and preserves the sense of the claim "I'm proud to be an American." On the other hand, I think Tyson had/has no issue with what I've claimed so far, so let me make one further claim. While the machinery of language may indeed be social, or socially determined, it is still the tool of individual humans, who surely retain the ability to try to understand a speaker's intended meaning and the right to hope/expect that a listener will do that. It doesn't matter what "Americanness" generally means. As a personal example, consider speaking with me; if I use a word in an apparently strange way--I might refer to "an algebra," or say something is "universal," or more subtly, I might use the word "structure" with a odd flavor--and if you cared to understand me, you would have to consider the fact that I study mathematics and ignore some alternative definitions. In the other direction, when a non-mathematician refers to "algebra" or "structure" or "universality," I'm (for the most part) able to put aside the mathematical notions. These are the sorts of things people really do...
Bottom line: Only some proper subclass of the Social Totality actually bears on any given utterrance.
