Conceptions of language and of language use:
(Towards the foundations of comparative philosophy basic and applied from Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research)
(New Delhi 9:3 May-August 1992)I
‘Everyone thinks,’ said Goethe, ‘because he can speak, that he can therefore speak about language.’ But this readiness on the part of people to speak about language is not matched by the adequacy their performance! Language is so close to us that this very closeness may make it difficult for us to answer (or even to ask) the all important question, what precisely is language?
Like money or tooth-brushes, language is what it does. What language does for human beings has to do with the variety of things that pass through the human mind. These mental contents may be:
Observations of reality of varying degrees of exactitude, such as: it’s raining; it’s pouring; it’s drizzling;
Observations on reality ranging from the delighted response to the disgruntled response, such as: ah rain!; rain-oh no!;
Wishes and hopes, such as: if only it would rain!; when the corn is ripe I do hope it won’t rain;
Plain demands, such as: rain, rain, go to Spain; let me know how many millimeters of rain there was when I was away yesterday.
It is in order to convey these mental contents to one another and thus keep up a social give-and-take that man invented and perfected language as a means of communication. At least that is how the first conception of language could be sent out.
The notion of communication is complex. Or rather, communication could be conceived of in successively more complex terms. At its simplest, communication consists is someone acting in some way or producing something with the intent to convey a certain mental content to someone. The next step involves a certain mutual recognition of this communicative intent – the recipient is aware of the other’s intent and the communicator in turn is aware that the recipient is so aware and the recipient in turn is aware that the communicator is so aware, and so forth. Finally, communication, at its most complex level, goes beyond this mutuality of recognition tot he sharing of the message-what is being conveyed to the addressee is also being conveyed to the communicator.
Thus, a child shams distress for the benefit of the mother. This is no more than a subcommunicative event. But the experienced mother may see through the intent of the child and the child in turn may come to recognize that the mother has recognized this and so forth. However, this is still a subcommunicative event in which the child plays the distress-shamming game with the mother. (If a child cries genuinely out of distress, that will not qualify even as a subcommunicative event, since there is no communicative intent on the part of the child who is merely evincing a sign of distress.)
Again, a highway policeman may try to stop the car being driven. He may do so by shooting a bullet into the tyre-this is not even subcommunicative; nothing is being conveyed to the motorist who may indeed mistakenly take it to be an accidental flat tyre. The policeman’s intent is one of controlling the movement of the car. This event involves not a communicative sign but a controlling move. If the policeman leaves a large, conspicuous boulder on the road, something is being intentionally conveyed to the motorist. The policeman is trying to get the motorist to stop the car. In case the policeman himself stands in the way, the success of this move depends not so much on the controlling effect as on the mutuality of recognition of the policeman’s communicative intent-the policeman is obviously trusting that the motorist is not a moron or a criminal, who may think nothing of driving the car into the policeman. Finally, a communicative event properly so called occurs when the policeman waves his hand at the motorist. All three conditions are now being satisfied, namely, the presence of a communicative intent, its mutual recognition, and the sharing of the conveying. The motorist is no mere recipient of the sign of hand-waving. The recipient of the communicative intent can now truly qualify as the addressee of communication.
Language events are necessarily communicative events in the full sense, and not merely subcommunicative. They call for not only the presence of communicative intent and mutuality in its recognition, but also a sharing of the message between the addressee (listener or reader, as the case may be and the communicative intent and mutuality in its recognition, but also a sharing of the message between the addressee (listener or reader, as the case may be) and the communicator (speaker or writer, correspondingly). What one conveys to another by means of language, one also conveys to oneself.
So much for the first conception of language. Now let us consider an alternate conception of language.
II
Language is not merely a means but a medium as well. It does not merely convey mental contents but also arranges, indeed even shapes them, as in:
The dog bit the man: The man was bitten by the dog.
It isn’t raining-it is pouring.
The first half of this last utterance is not so much a denial proper as an offer to reshape. In the earlier pair of utterances, the second can be seen to be a rearrangement of the first. Language is more than a means of communication, it is a medium of understanding.
The notion of understanding is complex. As we have already seen, mental content may consist in observations of reality or observations on reality or entertaining designs on reality (by way of wishes and hopes) or making demands on reality. (And reality naturally includes fellow human beings-we could observe them, observe upon them, observe upon them, wish or hope things of or form them, and call upon them to do things or at least to answer questions.) Whatever passes through our minds has to do with reality. As living beings, we not merely cope with the environment but keep trying to understand it with varying degrees of success.
Our understanding of the environment, of reality if you will, may move in the direction of abstraction. In the first phase of abstraction, we detect :-
1. (a) resemblances and differences
(b) contiguities and distances
(c) foregrounding and backgrounding.
For the present purpose, (1b) comprehends contiguities and distances in any ‘space’ – inclusive of real time or real space. In the second phase of abstraction there is a weighing – for instance, if resemblances outweigh differences, homogeneities come into view and, if differences outweigh resemblances, heterogeneities come into view. So we detect:-
2. (a) homogeneities and heterogeneities
(b) cohesions and transitions
(c) figures and grounds.
In the third phase of abstraction the simplification is even more drastic in each of the three parameters-
3. (a) identity and distinction
(b) union and separation
(c) presence and absence
For the present purpose the pole of presence at (3c) comprehends both actual presence and potential presence. The mode of abstraction also comprehends the relation of inferability (one quantity being a function of another, for instance)
4. Relation of inferability
But abstraction, successively greater abstraction, is not the only mode of human understanding. There is a second mode, the mode of concretion. In the first phase of concretion, we are impressed by –
1. landscapes and scenarios;
in the second phase, what comes into salience are –
2. pictures and stories;
and in the third phase by what we read into the foregoing-
3. powers and mechanisms.
The mode of concretion also comprehends the relation of participation (one entity partaking of and embodying another)-
4. Relation of participation: something manifest is a manifestant of something unmanifest with both participating in the same form or fund of energy but operating at distinct levels. Thus, an attracting/repelling magnet manifesting magnetic charge or an aware/agitated organism manifesting organic life would be examples
Concretions are the stuff of which myths and rites, scientific discoveries and technical inventions are made.
The two modes of understanding are co-present in the life-history of a person, of a whole people, indeed of mankind. Language is the medium of human understanding. It is through language that man makes himself ‘at home’ in the universal, starry heavens and all.
If language mediates understanding, is it wholly man-made? Is it wholly an acquisition or an achievement on the part of a person, of a people, indeed of mankind? Or does it rather devolve upon us as an inheritance or an innate gift? Is it as much a human attribute as it is a human artifact? Is it, in some deeper sense, nature-made in its essentials? True, language is what language does, but not like money or tooth brushes (both being artifacts) but rather is it like an elephant’s trunk or hibernation (both being bi-facts so to say)
Small children come into language simply as listeners to begin with. Indeed mother will even ‘address’ endearments to babies, who from an early age respond to speech sounds in a way that suggests that they recognize them to be quite distinct from other sounds, including other man-made sounds. (Even as adults we retain this capacity to spot language, even in a noisy environment and even with short, isolated snatches of a language we are not familiar with.) Speaking comes to the child much later. In the interval the child does not merely come to categorize the sound of speech and speech sound sequences. Even as it listens, these speech sound sequences, recurring sentences or phrases or words come to be associated with specific contexts and, what is more, specific mental contents arising in its mind (whether observations or responses, wishes and hopes or demands) come in for rearrangement and reshaping. The ordering of mental contents by way of abstraction and concretion has been going on even otherwise, but language gives it a boost. (Even as adults some of us at length the capacity to bypass language for some time, as artists and musicians, engineers and scientists will often testify.)
Consider the speed and ease, the perfection and sweep with which a child acquires the language (or languages in a bilingual/multilingual environment) between the ages of one and five. Indeed every child that is not deaf or feeble-minded or deprived of language exposure (such as having been brought up in seclusion by deaf-mutes or wolves) comes to acquire nearly adult-like control of language well before it reaches the age of seven. If, for any reason, this fails to happen, the person has, so to say, missed the bus and cannot acquire more than the rudiments of a ‘first language’ past the age of seven or so. This is all the more remarkable if one considers how, most of the time, the child simply jumps to conclusions from bits and pieces of language use by way of clues. Suppose the child comes across the two following utterances in Hindi (or Urdu) at a short interval:
āyā nahīn , gayā (he-came not, he-went)
āyā, nahīnn gayā (he-came, not he-went)
The child goes by the rule that words placed together in speech hang together in sense and words hanging together in sense get placed together in speech. So the placement of the ‘audible comma’ in the two utterances proves to be of great help to the child in the correct linking of the negation. It is into as if the child has to make a wild guess to understand utterances in language any more than it has to in order to understand non-linguistic happenings and doings, things and people. A child of even moderate intelligence appears to have a head start which even an adult of great intelligence in the face of strange language has not. The child does better even in the recognition and reproduction of speech sounds and their sequences.
Consider, again, how the form assumed by mental contents, even when the contents are the same, differs from language to language. Thus, a dream ‘falls’ to me in Marathi, it ‘comes’ to me in Hindi-Urdu, and I dream a dream in English. Quite often, however, these language-imparted notional forms turn out to be similar if not the same from language to language. Thus, Marathi, Hindi, and English all permit us to ‘see’ a dream but not, apparently, to ‘hear’ a dream. And all three languages permit us to ask the question ‘What happened?’ when the expected answer is ‘I saw a dream’. One does not expect to come across the following exchange :
What did you do? – I saw a dream.
Such an exchange will be as bizarre in English as it will be in Marathi or Hindi. And these resemblance (uncanny or natural, depending on one’s expectations) are just what makes translation feasible, though by no means always easy. (How does one translate ‘He has a sister, a servant, some property, and plenty of confidence’ in Marathi or Hindi-Urdu?) This translatability between human languages extends to the oldest recorded languages and present-day languages of peoples with rudimentary technical and social ecology. The significance of this translatability between human languages is realized when one considers how even a working translation is to possible from Hindustani music to language or from Hindustani language to music.
Such are the considerations that lead one to the conclusion that language as a medium of understanding is more than a human acquisition or achievement and that it is a human endowment or inheritance-whether our point of reference is the life-history of a person, a people, or mankind.
III
Let us now sum up the two alternate conceptions of language.
1.(a) What does language do? It is a means of communicating the contents of the human mind.
(b) To what effect? It thus helps people to understand one another and understand the community they are getting to the members of (that is, people as ‘us’). In short, it helps one to gain social access.
(c) And how does language get to be what it is in a person, in a community, in mankind? It is a human acquisition and achievement.
2.(a) what does language do? It is a medium of ordering (or imparting a form to) the contents of the human mind and, if desired, conveying them to other human beings.
(b) to what effect? It thus helps to understand the world they live in (and the world of course includes people as ‘them’). In short, it helps one to gain access to the world.
(c) And how does language get to be what it is in a person, in a community, in mankind? It is a human endowment from nature. The capacity to acquire language in childhood and the relative homogeneity of human languages is ensured by genetic endowment.
So stated, the two alternate views are mutually contradictory. (We shall return to this point more than once in the rest of this paper.)
Language is one’s own language to being with. Other languages come later and serve introduce one to other peoples-and other worlds. Later language learning is then quite distinct from early language acquisition. Any individual differences in language proficiency are traceable to differences in later language learning-his applies as much to later phases in the learning of the language(s) acquired in early childhood as to languages learned later in the first place. If ‘first language’ is the first language over to which a speaker has been exposed long enough for him to acquire it, and own language is a language that the speaker feels completely at home with so that he is never conscious about the possibility of making errors using it, it is only to be expected that, as a rule, one’s first language is one’s own language and that, most of the time, one’s own language is one’s first language.
In general, unreflective man probably thinks of language, his own language, as transparent medium of human understanding and thus tends to and more towards the second conception. Two old English ladies have given classic expression to this second conception:
(a) How senseless can a Frenchman be? Can’t he see that a shoe (chow in French) is not a cabbage?
(b) How do I know what I want to say till I say it?
They were presumably monolingual.
Awareness of foreign or earlier or local modes of speech makes even unreflective
man aware of language variation and helps him take the first step forward from this sort of navïét-and toward the conception of language as a means of communication. (preoccupation with writings makes man oblivious of historical or local variation in language. Constant adaptation of spelling to changes in speech and the ritual prestige of speech prevents this form happening India.)
Awareness of indirect or displaced or oblique modes of language use (like metaphor, metonymy, irony, circumlocution) or of enriched or evocative modes of language use (like polemical or rhetorical or rhetorical or poetic suggestively makes man acutely aware that not all language use is equally transparent as a medium of human understanding.
It is only to be excepted, therefore, that even people that are neither language scientists nor philosophers of language appear to base their language related thinking on one or the other of these conceptions of language. In other words, these two conceptions, far from being abstrusely speculative, actually work hard for their livelihood! Consider some concrete examples of language-related debates:
(1a) Shouldn’t translator be content with decoding faithfully what is being communicated in the source language?
(1a) Shouldn’t translator rather aspire to re-encode the source text to as to be faithfully understood in the target language?
(2a) Shouldn’t a second language teacher aspire to help the learner internalize the second language so well that he receives and produces as readily as a native speaker does and without interference form the learner’s own language? Isn’t the teacher aiming at parallel language control on the learner’s part?
(2b) Shouldn’t a second language teacher rather be content with building upo the learner’s ready mastery of the first language and capacity to learn (or even discover) rules and apply them with some confidence? Isn’t the teacher’s job limited to instilling composite language control on the learner’s part?
(3a) Couldn’t the medium of teaching any subject be any language that is known to the learner and the teacher and that is otherwise expedient?
(3b) Shouldn’t one rather insist on teaching a subject through a language that will ensure its assimilation on the part of the learner-especially when it comes to insights and attitudes as distinct from mere facts and skills? (Presumably the learner’s own language.)
(4) When a message is being produced be in full control of the linguistic means and its impact on the addressee?
(4a) Shouldn’t the communicator be in full control of the linguistic means and its impact on the addressee?
(4b) Shouldn’t communicator rather allow for the variable impact of the linguistic medium on the addressee?
(5) Literary art works through a medium that is created out of language material and mental content material.
(5a) Isn’t the medium of literature transitive in that it points away from itself as
a means to some poetic end? Isn’t the language vehicle so worked over and designed as to affect the addressee in a certain heightened manner? Isn’t the experimental content so selected and organized as to invite the addressee into a certain poetic world? Isn’t the literary art best seen as certain devices adding up to a technique?
(5b) Isn’t the medium of literature transitive in that the language material and the
experimental material penetrate each other so as to fuse into the autonomous medium in which the literary work has its being? Isn’t the literary art best seen as the evocation of certain qualities integrated into a style?
As one might except, these debates concerning language-related activities have been conducted in relative isolation from each other historically. And yet, significantly enough, certain themes recur. Broadly speaking, alternative (a) in each case will be favoured by those who look upon language as no more than a means of communication, while alternative (b) in each case will be favoured by those who look upon language as nothing less than a medium of human understanding. Practical exigency and the call for experimental authenticity, however, often reveal that the two conceptions are not all that mutually opposed.
In the more theoretical activity of the scientific analysis of language or of working out a certain philosophy of language the two have more overtly have acted as rival conceptions, is one might expect. (We shall continue to mark the resulting alternative positions in a debate as (a) and (b) corresponding respectively to the ‘means’ conception of language and the ‘medium’ conception of language.)
(6) Language as the system to be analysed abuts upon reality at two places
instead of one. Let the two ends be called the language vehicle and the message.
(6a) Shouldn’t linguistic analysis be primarily concerned with the language vehicle end (speech or writing as the case may be) rather than the message end? After all it is the vehicle end that is the more accessible for study and that differentiates language from other message-conveying systems as a means of human communication.
(6b) Shouldn’t linguistic analysis be primarily concerned with message and rather than the language vehicle end? After all is the message end that language is all about and that shows up how language mediates human understanding.
The philosophical ramifications of the two conceptions of language can now be seen in a better perspective. I hope that it will be appreciated that this apparent delay taking up has been to the philosopher’s advantage.
The obvious point of entry to the philosophy of language would be its traditional triad:
Language: Thought : Reality
The triad is best seen as a cyclical set of three dyads.
Language: Thought (the problem of meaning)
Thought: Reality (the problem of knowledge)
Reality: Language (the problem of reference)
The problem of reference will be seen to subsume at once the problem of validation (or truth if you like) and the problem of fulfillment (or realization if you like). (Appropriate Sanskrit terms could be yathārthatā and cartirtāhatā.) Validation relates to linguistic message conveying observations of reality, facts/insights and responses/attitudes. (Let us call such messages ‘statements’.) Fulfillment relates to linguistic messages conveying wishes or hopes and plain demands. (Let us call such messages ‘mands’; questions are a variety of mands.)
Many of the debates in the philosophy of language will be seen to fall under one or the other of the three rubrics.
Under Language and Thought
(7-11) (a) Isn’t the whole message to be seen as made up of part messages? (khana-pakṣa)
(b) Or rather aren’t part messages to be seen as mere intersections of whole messages? (akhaṇḍa-pakṣa)
(7-12) (a) Isn’t phrase no more than a marginalized sentence?
(b) Or rather isn’t a sentence no more than an enlarged phrase?
(7-13) (a) Isn’t an operator (such as negation, implication, identity, or existence) nothing less than a logical device?
(b) Or rather isn’t an operator no more than a predicate like any other? And as such merely reflecting differences in thought?
(7-1) Summing up for the problem of meaning-
(a) Language can be trusted to be revelatory of thought.
(b) Language cannot be trusted to be revelatory of thought.
Note: The question is wherever the meaning embodied in language is or isn’t a trustworthy guide to the meaning sought to be conveyed as the message.
Under Thought and Reality
(7-21) (a) Isn’t the universal (jāti) to be understood as an intersection of individuals (vyakti)?
(b) Or rather isn’t the individual to be understood as a bundle of universals?
(7-22) (a) Isn’t the attribute (guṇa) to be understood as an abstraction from the substance (dravya) ?
(b) Or rather isn’t the substance to be understood as a mere place-and-time-holder for the attributes?
(7-23) (a) Isn’t the relation (saṁbandha) to be understood as a juxtaposition of the relata (saṁbandhin)? Aren’t relations essentially external? (kārya-saṁbandha, saṁsarga)
(c) Or rather isn’t the retalum to be understood as a fulfiller of the relation? Aren’t relations essentially internal? (nitya-saṁbandha, samavāya)
(7-2) Summing up for the problem of knowledge
(a) Thought can be trusted to be revelatory of reality.
(b) Thought cannot be trusted to be revelatory of reality.
Note: Broadly speaking, abstractions like universals, attributes, relations are held to embody thought and corrections like individuals, substances, relata are held to embody reality.
Under Reality and Language
(7-31) (a) Isn’t any middle ground between positive and negative to be totally excluded?
(b) Or rather aren’t the positive and the negative poles to be both excluded by the ‘vacuous’? And thus leaving room for ‘presuppositions’?
(7-32) (a) Isn’t any middle ground between necessary and contingent to be totally excluded?
(b) Or rather isn’t there a middle ground between necessary and contingent consisting in what is contingently necessary? And thus leaving room for the ‘meaning postulate’ and the ‘synthetic a priori’ and the ‘categorical predication’?
(7-3) Summing up for the problem of reference-
(a) Language cannot be trusted to tailor its system to reality.
(b) Language can be trusted to tailor its system to reality.
Note: The question is whether the ‘formal’ component of the message needs to be or needn’t be maximally absence and rigorously separated from the ‘material’ component of the message.
It is reassuring to find that most of these debates together with their alignment to the two conceptions of language turn up in Western theorizing about language as well in Indian theorizing about language. The debates, therefore, are presumably not merely local squabbles. It will certainly be rewarding to show the historical connection in each case between the position in the debate and the relevant conception of language.
But then it is not so reassuring to find that these debates tend to remain inconclusive not for want of evidence but for want of a willingness to recognize that the other side may have a point. Thinkers tend to make up their minds in advance and this is rather unfortunate if only one realized that the two underlying conceptions are not all that mutually opposed. We have already noted this in relation to the relatively more practical and so more experience around debates concerning translation, second language teaching, teaching through a language, rhetoric and popular literature, and literary art.
It is possible to restate the two conceptions of language so as to open up the possibility of their being mutually complementary rather than opposed. The difference between them can be one of emphasis.
(1) Language is nothing less than means of human communication.
(2) Language is nothing less than a medium of human understanding.
It is about time we moved from conceptions of language to conceptions of language use.
IVExcept for a passing reference or two, we have so far confined our attention to the language system rather than language use. The transition from language to language use is a passage along two axes—a passage from language generally and globally to language specifically and locally and at the same time a passage from the potentiality of language to language in actuality on a particular occasion. The passage from the generic-potential end to the specific-actual end could be set out in some such terms:
(1) man’s capacity for language
(2) the community’s language system
(3) the individual’s language competence
(4) language use on a particular occasion
‘Language’ for us is (1-2), and ‘language use’ will be (3-4).
Saussure’s langue and parole correspond roughly to (2) and (4); his faculté de language corresponds to (1). Chomsky’s competence’ and language performance’ corresponds to (3) and to the earlier linguists ‘ideal language speaker-listener’.
Ancient Indians distinguished between šabda-šakti ‘signifying power of speech (also called šabda-vṛtti when the power is seen as directed) and śabda prayoga exercise of this power’ (also called šabda-vyāprā by literary theorists rather than grammarians). The power and its exercise are directed to artha. The pair śabda and aŕtha correspond roughly to our earlier language vehicle’ and ‘message’ respectively. The pari śakti/vṛitti and prayoga/vyāpāra corresponds roughly to the passage from potential to actual. The passage from global-general to local-specific is assimilated to the passage between what is inward and what is outward. So ancient Indians separated ‘inner speech’ (pašyanti), ‘middle speech’ (madhyamā), and ‘outer speech’ (vaikari); this is the well-known speech triad (vāṇi-trya). The speaker starts from inner speech, our understanding as a specific visualization; this is enduringly abstract (nitya). The first transition takes him to middle speech, our shaping of that piece of understanding into a particular language; this is enduringly abstract but at the same time is becomes segmented (khaṇḍita) and sequential (karmika). The second transition takes him to outer speech, our giving utterance to that understanding as shaped into a particular language; this is no longer enduringly abstract, continues to be segmented and sequential, and becomes accessible to oneself and others (sva-para-vedya). The listener starts from outer speech, moves to middle speech, and finally recovers inner speech.
So much for the historical excursus on the distinction between language and language use. Before we take up conceptions language use in some detail, let us take an overview of the general lie of the land. Earlier we spoke of the traditional triad, namely, Language: Thought: Reality in conjunction with Language, that is, language system. Recall also the observation that, as living beings, human beings not merely cope with the environment but keep trying to understand environment with varying degrees of success. Thought is only an aspect of this attempt at understanding and the environment is only an aspect of reality. Reality is environment sub specie aeternitatis. We now need to speak of a second triad in conjunction with Language Use and the two triads can then be juxtaposed.
Language---Understanding—Reality
: : :
Language-- Coping ---Life
Use
Understanding has an aspect of reason (thought is rational understanding and an aspect of imagination (there is no handy name for imaginative understanding—perhaps the ancient Greeks’ distinction between logos and muthos, literally speech and story respectively, corresponds roughly to the distinction between the two aspects of understanding). Rational understanding favours the mode of abstraction and inferability. Imaginative understanding favours the mode of concretion and participation. Coping, likewise, has an aspect of reason—that is what work and production are all about; and also an aspect of imagination—that is what play and creativity are all about. (‘Work’ and ‘play’ are of course to be understood here in the large sense.) Work and production typically take the shape of ‘routines’—unless we are thinking of open-ended, exploratory, innovative work or production. Play and creativity typically take the shape of ‘games’—unless we are thinking of open-ended, casual, exploratory play or creativity. Language and language Use embrace both reason and imagination. Reality transcends the distinction between reason and imagination; and so does Life. The distinction between reason and imagination could perhaps be thought of as one between delayed and on-the-spot processing of ‘information’. Reality in relation to a message is the topic of that message.
The distinction between topic and context is important. To revert to some of our earlier examples,
The dog bit the man.
The man has bitten by the dog.
When the corn is ripe, I do hope it won’t rain!
Rain, rain, to go Spain!
How many millimeter of rain was there when I was away yesterday?
The following are the relevant matters in hand (but not necessarily at hand), in short, the Topic (prakaraṇa) respectively:
The observation of the biting by the dog of the man
The observation of the biting of the man by the dog
The hope for the absence of rain at the time of the corn being ripe
The demand that the rain stop
The demand (or the wish, as the case may be) from the addressee for supplying the information about the quantity of rain on the previous day
And the following in turn are the sort of situation at hand in which such an utterance might have figured, in short, the Context (prasṅga) respectively:
The wish to know what the dog did
The wish to know what happened to the man
The worry about the danger of ultimately rain for the standing crop
The child, John, Brown, wants to play
The communicator’s need to ascertain the amount of rain that cell during his/her absence
In the early stages of language acquisition the child draws upon the Context and manages to grasp the Topic in hand if it also happens to be, along with the Context, at hand. The child may not even see the Topic as distinct from the Context. But an important step forward in early language acquisition is for the child to realize that, while the Context is necessarily present or at hand (prāpta), the Topic is merely in hand or presented (prastuta) but not necessarily at hand or present—the rain whose amount is to be ascertained is no longer at hand. Once this momentous step is taken, there is no more excuse for the failure to distinguish between the Topic (and Topic-relevance) and the Context (and Context-relevance). (Some discourses about language inexcusably fail to do so.) Reality is simply Topic writ large and Life is simply Context writ large. (Parenthetically, one may wonder whether this step forward in the life-history of a child is but a recapitulation of a comparable step forward in the life-history of mankind, namely, getting to the point at which what is out of sight is not eo ipso out of mind.)
Let us now go back to the hexad, which could be seen either as a double triad or a triple dyad. Language Use is the exercise of Language and Language continually shapes itself in the course of Language Use. Coping is the exercise of Understanding and Understanding continually shapes itself in the course of Coping. (For Marx, thought continually shapes itself in the course of Coping.) Life is embedded in Reality and Reality is continually re-under-stood in the course of Life. (For Writtgenstein, thought too is embedded in forms of life and any form of life is but an aspect of Coping. If Marx appears to have highlighted labour to the neglect of language at the centrestage, there is an interesting disquisition in the šāntiparavan of Mahābhārata (at 12.173.11ff) on the tongue and the hand as the twin equipment of Man. If the eye is taken to be the universal emblem for understanding, one could say that the eye understands and the hand copes—both being assisted by the tongue speaking.)
The stage is now set for introducing the two alternate conceptions of Language Use and these two are certainly not to be confused with the two alternate conceptions of Language. Indeed, in actual Language Use, the complementary of the two alternate conceptions of language really comes home to us. Language Use is the tritium quid in which the two alternate conceptions of Language meet.
As we have just seen, man’s coping with life can be either in the nature of doing something—whether in the shape of work of play-or in the nature of making something—whether in the shape of production or creativity. Doing something is, so to say, intransitive, in that it is simply a part and parcel of man’s interaction with reality and tends to bring about a certain restructuring of man himself and thus promote a smoother, harmonious interaction.
Earlier, we asked ourselves a question about language—Is Language a man-made artifact or rather is it man’s natural endowment? Now, we cannot ask ourselves an analogous question about Language Use. Language Use is palpably man-made. The question to ask then is rather—Is language use in the nature of making something or doing something? Is Language Use the making of an artifact or the performing of an act? In proposing these two alternate conceptions of Language Use, we are not thinking of the vehicle of speech and writing so much as of the message. If we were thinking of the vehicle, the answer would be rather simple—speaking is the performing of an act and writing is the making of an artifact. Rather, we are thinking of the message in proposing a conception of Language Use.
If we think of language use as the making of an artifact, the artifact in question is the Language Text that the speaker (or the writer as the case may be) makes or an Interpretation that the listener (or the reader) makes out from the text. Any performing of an act is going to make a difference to Life. The Language Act is of course an act of a special kind—not the physical act of speech or writing but an act concerning the message as such.
The conceptors of Language Use that gets accepted has a bearing on the way Language Use is seen to be placed in the immediate context. While the text as an artifact can be reused in varying contexts and so remains somewhat loosely connected with any given context, the act is more closely embedded in the context and so needs to be seen as a fresh act in a new context.
The two alternate conceptions of language use can now be set out in some such terms:
(1) (a) Language Use is basically the making of an artifact.
(b)The speaker (or the writer, as the case may be) makes a Language Text and the listener (or the reader) makes out what it is and offers an Interpretation of that text.
(c) The making of a text and its interpretation may either be methodical and productive in character or be imaginative and creative in character.
(d) The making of an artifact to what effect? The making of the language text or its interpretation makes a difference to Reality as understood by the language user concerned (that is, the speaker/writer or the listener/ reader). Its relation to the context of use remains somewhat loose.
(2) (a) Language Use is basically the performing of an act.
(b) The speaker (or the writer) performs as Language Act and the listener (or the reader) offers an active Response to that act.
(c) The performing of an act and the offering of a response to it may be undertaken either in the spirit of work (if not as routine work) or in the spirit of play ((if not as a game).
(e) The performing of an act to what effect? The performing of a language act or the offering of a response to it makes a difference to Life as lived by the language user concerned in the course of coping-with. Its relation to the context of use remains fairly close.
Language is what language does. So Language Use, whether one thinks of it as an artifact one thins of language as remain of human communication or as a medium of human understanding. Of course any human artifact or any human act can be put to non-standard uses. Thus, a hammer could be used not for driving nails but, say, as a paperweight. When the servant pounds coffee beans in a mortar, the Arab master may look not only for good coffee but also for the pleasing sound of rhythmic strokes. Like wise with Language Use. Ready examples are metaphors, rhetorical questions, innuendos—by way of displaced or enriched modes of Language Use.
Now, what bearing do these two alternate conceptions of Language Use have on the language-related practical activities, more specifically on the debates concerning translation, second language teaching, teaching through a language, rhetoric and popular literature, and literary art? That position in each debate that is expected to be favoured by the Text conception of language use is marked (a). And the position in the debate that is expected to be favoured by the Act conception of Language Use is marked (b).
(1a) Shouldn’t the translator aspire to be faithful to the source Text even in its grammatical and spoken/written form? (Thus, a phrase by phrase translation will be more faithful than a sentence by sentence translation.)
(b) Rather, shouldn’t the translator aspire to ensure that the translation is viable in the target language? (Thus, a translation that doesn’t even sound like a translation will be more viable in the target language than a translation that declares itself to be a translation.)
(2a) Shouldn’t second language teacher make a teaching text-centred and ensure repetitive, imitative practice based on the text?
(b) Rather, shouldn’t second language teacher make the teaching situation-centred and ensure in the learner the ability to improvise and cope with ‘unseen’ material?
(3a) Shouldn’t the medium of teaching any subject be a language selected as suitable for the texts relating to the subject?
(b) Rather, shouldn’t the medium of teaching any subject be a language selected as suitable for the learner concerned?
(4) When a message is being produced for being rhetorically (or poetically) effective with many people:
(b) Shouldn’t the communicator be in control of the content in the interests of the addressee?
(5a) Isn’t a work of literature a text transitively pointing away from itself and offering itself for our interpretation? And doesn’t this ‘room with a view’ make a difference to reality as understood by us? But remain relatively detached from the context at hand?
(b) Rather, isn’t a work of literature an autonomous gesture inviting us this vision? And doesn’t this enclosed ‘hall of mirrors’ make a difference to the life as lived us? And so remain relatively embed in the context at hand?
What we have said earlier about the two rival conceptions of language in relation to
such relatively practical concerns also applies to the two rival conceptions, of language use, namely, that practical exigency and the call for experimental authenticity often reveal that the two conceptions are not all that mutually opposed.
Turning to the more theoretical activity of linguistic analysis, we similarly find an similar alignment with conceptions of Language Use.
(6) Language is susceptible not only to the polarity of language vehicle (speech or writing as the case may be) and the message, but also to the polarity of topic and context aspects of the message and to the polarity of form and substance. Substance corresponds to the first phase of abstraction in linguistic analysis (‘raw’ speech/writing or ‘raw’ topic/context as the case may be) and form corresponds the second and third phases of abstraction in linguistic analysis (‘processed’ speech/writing or ‘processed’ topic/context as the case may be).
(a) Shouldn’t linguistic analysis of the vehicle or the message be primarily concerned with their form aspect rather than their substance aspect? And shouldn’t linguistic analysis of the message be primarily concerned with its topic aspect rather than its context aspect?
(b) shouldn’t linguistic analysis of the vehicle or the message be primarily concerned with their substance aspect rather than with their form aspect? And shouldn’t linguistic analysis of the message be primarily concerned with its context aspect rather than its topic aspect?
When it comes to a certain philosophy of language use, we need to turn to the second triad, namely, Language Use : Coping: Life, seen as a cyclical set of three dyads.
Language : Coping (the problem of directionality)
Coping : Life (the problem of power)
Life : Language Use (the problem of worthwhileness)
Many of the debates concerning Language Use will be seen to fall under one or the
other of the three rubrics. The alignment with the two conceptions of Language Use
continues to be marked (a) and (b) as before.
Under Language Use and Coping
(7-11) (a) Isn’t the Context implicit in the Topic? Doesn’t the Topic call out some appropriate Context?
(b) Or rather doesn’t the Topic arise out of the Context? Doesn’t the context yield the Topic?
(7-12) (a) Isn’t any Mand, thought of as open to fulfillment, reducible to a Statement concerning the wish or he demand?
(b) Or rather isn’t any Statement, thought of as open to validation, reducible to a Mand calling for suasion?
Note: Roughly speaking, with (a) ‘Let this be the case’ is seen as ‘I want this to be the case’; but with (b) ‘Such is the case’ is seen as ‘Let this be seen to be the case’.
(7-13) A Sentence, whether a Statement or a Mand, is made of phrases. A phrase has both a definition and a range. A phrase is either a Name or Term. A Name is Statement-like in that any definition offered has to be validated by the range given. A term is Mand-like in that any range offered has to fulfill the definition given. Names and terms are rational symbols in the mode of concretion.
(a) Isn’t any Term reducible to a Name for whatever fulfils the definition?
(b) Or rather isn’t any Name reducible to a Term for whatever the range validates?
(7-14) A language Text that is open to being considered as conveying a piece of imaginative understanding embeds imaginative symbols in the mode of concretion. Such a symbol is either Recreative or Creative. A Recreative imaginative-symbol is Term-like in that it lends itself readily to paraphrase and translation. A Creative imaginative-symbol is Name-like in that it resists paraphrase and translation.
(a) Isn’t any Creative imaginative-symbol finally reducible to a Recreative imaginative-symbol with title or no residue?
(b) Or rather doesn’t any Recreative imaginative-symbol have a residue that isn’t reducible to rational-symbol paraphrase?
(7-1) Summing up for the problem of directionality-
(a) Reference controls Meaning.
(b) Meaning controls Reference.
Under Coping and Life
(7-21) A Statement is descriptive if validation dominates if not controls suasion. A statement is ascriptive if suasion dominates if not controls validation.
(a) Isn’t any ascriptive Statement finally reducible to a descriptive Statement?
(b) Or rather isn’t any descriptive Statement finally reducible to an ascriptive Statement?
Likewise for descriptive and ascriptive terms.
(7-22) A Mand is prescriptive if fulfillment dominates if not controls suasion–and as such conveys nothing less than a demand. A Mand is inscriptive if suasion dominates if not controls fulfillment—and as such conveys nothing more than a wish.
(a) Isn’t any inscriptive Mand finally reducible to a prescriptive Mand?
(b) Isn’t any prescriptive Mand finally reducible to a inscriptive Mand?
Likewise for prescriptive and inscriptive names.
(7-2) Summing up for the problem of power--
(a) Reference controls suasion.
(b) Suasion controls reference.
Under Coping and Life
(7-31) Any piece of language use has a genesis in life. It is motivated and as such relatable back to some arkhē (origin, bīja).
(a) A Language Text codifies some arkhē and as such subserves Coping.
(b) A Language Act Justifies some arkhē and as much legitimates Coping.
(7-32) Any piece of language use has a design on life. It is intentional and as such relatable forward to some telos (end, prayojana).
(a) A Language Text codifies some telos and as such subserves Coping.
(b) A Language Act justifies some telos and as such legitimates Coping.
(7-3) Summing up for eh problem of worthwileness
(a) A piece of language use finally codifies Coping in relation to Life.
(b) A piece of language use finally justifies Coping in relation to Life.
It will be rewarding to track down the debates together with their alignment to the two conceptions of Language Use as Text and as Act respectively in Indian and Western theorizing about language among linguistics and philosophers in the course of history. It will also be worthwhile to assess how far thinkers have succeeded in approaching if not reaching any conclusions, and in uncovering any motivations underlying the positions adopted.
VIWe have maintained that the two central questions, or central debates if you will, namely, ‘What is language?’ and ‘What is language use?’ are contiguous and yet distinct.
Since the questions are distinct, one would expect no positive (or negative) correlation between someone adopting the ‘means of communication’ position or the ‘medium of understanding’ position in respect of the first central question and his adopting the ‘language text’ position or the language act’ position in respect of the second central question.
Consequently, one could reasonably expect all the four combinations to turn up in the course of human history-even if one were to limit oneself to if one were to limit one self to the course of Western history or of Indian history, one should say that considering that these two civilizations have constantly deliberated over language and its use.
And yet the two questions are contiguous. So one could not expect each of the four positions in the debates to readily appear to be a composite of positions in two distinct debates so much as one of four positions in a complex debate concerning translation or language analysis or whatever.
A rapid survey of the areas of debates—whether practical or theoretical—should bear this out in broad terms. (The specific assignment of a school or a thinker to one of the four logically available positions may be debatable and as such even open to a setting straight of the historical record. But that of course is not the point at issue.) The four combinations will be marked as follows:
(A) Language is a means of human communication and its use is the making of a text.
(B) Language is a means of human communication and its use is the doing of an act.
(C) Language is a medium of human understanding and its use is the making of a text
(D) Language is a medium of human understanding and its use is the doing of an act
Let us take up the relatively more practical debates first.
(1) Translation: The Indian civilization has not been too active in and concerned about this language-related activity. So the examples will some more readily from the West.
(A) Translators of canonical and statutory texts.
(B) Translators of technical and discursive texts.
(C) Translators of poetry and other literary texts.
(D) Translators of utilitarian, persuasive, or factual texts.
Note: The cleavage (A-C) versus (B-D) appears to be salient. No wonder then that the term ‘faithful’ and ‘free’, loosely used, are often unilluminating if not misleading.
(2) Second Language Teaching
(A) The mimicry-memorization-pattern-practice method, the method of the traditional school for teaching Sanskrit to the young (pāṭha- šālā).
(B) The direct method.
(C) Literary selection and grammar method (the traditional method in the West for teaching classical languages, also adopted in nineteenth-century India. Whether for teaching Sanskrit or for English, for instance.)
(D) The translation method.
Note: The cleavage (A-B) versus (C-D) appears to be salient. No wonder then that (A,B) are often clubbed together as the Modern Method and that (C, D) as the Traditional or Grammar-Translation method.
(3) Teaching through a language
(A) The practical-minded choice of the more widely available language among the subject texts.
(B) The practical-minded choice of the more widely available language in the body of learners.
(C) The committed choice of the textually authentic language—as in the giving of prominence to Sanskrit and Pali in propagating Buddhist teaching.
(D) The committed choice of the learner’s own language-as in Buddha’s own policy, among Protestant proselytizers from the West.
Note: The cleavage (A-B) versus (C-D)
(4) Persuasive and popular literature (inclusive of folk texts)
(A) Producers and receivers of didactic texts, say, of moral conformity or moral saire, political conformity or subversion (utopian or satirical as the case may be)
(B) Producers and receivers of indulgent texts, say, of wish-fulfillment or sentiment or titillation
(C) Producers and receivers of exhortative texts, say, of ideological persuasion or clinical diagnosis-and-therapy
(D) Producers and receivers of ‘thought-provoking’ texts, or texts of high comedy or tragedy.
Note: The cleavage (A-C) and (B-D) appears to be salient. No wonder then that strategies of (A, C) are often clubbed together as the rhetoric of ‘hard sell’ and that strategies of (B, D) as the rhetoric of ‘soft sell’.
(5) Literary art
(A) The proponents and adherents of Instruction, vyutpatti and Technique, alaṁkaraṇa as central.
(B) The proponents and adherents of Delight, prītti and Technique, alaṁkaraṇa as central.
(C) The proponents and adherents of Maturity (of rasa-dhvani) and Style, rīti as central.
(D) The proponents and adherents of Form and Style. rīti as central.
Note: The cleavage (A-C) and (B-D) appears to be salient in the West and the cleavage (A-B) and (C-D) appears to be salient in ancient India. ‘Maturity’ and ‘rasa-dhvani’ are theoretical language-related pursuits.
(6) Linguistic analysis
(A) Bloomfield, pāṇini , the šiṣkā phonologists.
(B) Saussure, the Prague School, Halliday, the Kātantra school, the prātišākhya phoneticians.
(C) Chomsky, Nageša.
(D) Sapir, the rebels against Chomsky, Bhartṛhari.
Note: The cleavage (A-C) and (B-D) appears to be salient in the contemporary West and ancient India.
(7) Philosophy of language
(A) Locke, prācya nyāya school.
(B) Ideal language philosophy, mīmāṁsā school.
(C) Descarets, Frege, navya nyāya.
(D) Kant, later Writtgenstein, Ordinary language philosophy, Humboldt, Bhatṛhari.
Note: The cleavage (A-C) and (B-D) appears to be salient.
We have suggested a positive correlation between positions concerning the two central questions and positions concerning various language-related practical and theoretical activities. At the same time, we have suggested a certain complementarity between opposite positions. Specifically, in case the cleavage (A-C) and (B-D) is salient, then this is indicative of the complementarity and consequent recumbency of the opposition between ‘language text’ and ‘language act’ conceptions of language use. And in case the cleavage (A-D) and (C-D) is salient, then this is indicative of the complementarity and consequent recumbency of the opposition between ‘means of communication’ and ‘medium of understanding’ conceptions of language. It will be seen that the complementarity is relative to the specific area of language-related activity. Since the philosophers in ancient India tend to take up not ‘problems’ so much as ‘stances’ to set them going.) a thinker operating in more fields than one does not always adopt analogous positions.
Of course, there is more to philosophizing than the philosophy of language. We could additionally think of two areas of philosophizing: first, the philosophy of Understanding and Reality and, secondly, the philosophy of Coping and Life. (In the modern West the philosophy of Understanding and Reality tends to go under the rubics, espistemology, aesthetics, ontology, and even cognitive science, while the philosophy of Coping and Life turns up as moral and political, philosophy of man, and even management science? Finding correspondences in ancient India is more problematic, since the philosophers in ancient India tend to take up note ‘problems’ so much as ‘stances’ to set them going.) Frankly incomplete and creating a system that is complete but frankly not wholly consistent, style I tens to go for the first alternative and Style II for the second alternative.
Style I: At best we can aspire to an understanding of understanding. Any understanding of reality needs to flow from it.
Style II: Any understanding of reality comes first. Any understanding of understanding will flow from it.
The other pivotal question is—What does philosophizing do for us? And to what effect? Again, two alternative Missions have turned up for philosophical understanding. (Again two alternatives? Mirabile dictu, I can hear you saying under your breath. I don’t blame you! But that’s the way it appears to be.)
Mission I: philosophizing yields to us nothing less than a Speculum. It holds a mirror to whatever is about.
Mission II: philosophizing yields to us nothing more than an Organum. It fashions for us a handy set of tools for understanding whatever it is about.
Together we have four combinations. To resume our rapid survey, again with the appropriate disclaimer about the assignments.
(A) Style I and Mission I: Locke, early Writtgenstein, Descartes fall here with their schemata.
(B) Style I and Mission II: Hume, Kant (after waking up form his ‘dog matic slumber’), later Writtgenstein fall here with their critiques.
(C) Style II and Mission I: Hegel falls here with his landscapes-and-scenarios.
(D) Style II and Mission II: Nietzshe, Marx fall here with their manifestors.
The absence of ancient Indian names could be made good by more competent hands. It will be interesting if not rewarding to compare these combinations in the philosophy of Understanding and Reality with those under the philosophy of Language and Language Use.
Turning to the philosophy of Coping and Life, what are the pivotal questions? There appear to be two distinct, if not somewhat opposed, styles of coping recommended in philosophical terms.
Style I: Let rational doing and making (work and actions, production and routines) be the mainstay of Coping. Any Imaginative doing and making may follow suit or occupy ancestries.
Style II: Let imaginative doing and making (play and moves, creativity and games) set the tune for rational doing and making.
But then a radical spiritual doubt may assail us at the outset concerning the very mission of the philosophy of Coping and Life. Optimism and pessimism may go far beyond a simple matter of temperament and style of functioning. So the other pivotal question is—Is a Coping with life given to man at all? Doesn’t coping rather amount to coping with coping? To a bracing of one self against what life has to offer to us? Life after all presupposes the emergence of a working relationship, a modicum of harmony between human beings and the environment they have to cope with. Failing this, suicide and murder are round the corner.
Mission I: Let the restructuring of the environment be the mainstay of coping with life, so that we can wrest good from evil, violence, and suffering.
Mission II: Let the restructuring of ourselves be the mainstay of coping with life, so that we can salvage some dignity from what life has to offer to us.
If we were to continue with our rapid survey, which we do not propose to do, we shall have to cast our net very wide indeed-beyond professional philosophizing to moralities and polities, ideologies and religious, life-styles and programmes. Obviously we have moved even further away from the philosophy of Language and Language Use. But even here it will be of some interest to make cross-comparisons of the positions involved. Consider, for examples, the implications of silence as a gap in or around the Language Text and as a Language Act taking over from or yielding to the Language Text; or of communication as a super communicative event in which mere communicative intent gives place to the urge for one’s ‘participation’ in the beloved or godhead or whatever. Ityalam.
NOTES TO SECTIONS
Sections I. What Goethe said is as follows:
‘En jeder, weil er spricht, gloubt auch über die Sprache sprechen zu können’ this probably comes from his Maximan and Refleximen.
For the notion of communication, see Kelkar 1980a: chapter I, section D and the references therein-including Zipf 1967 from whom the policeman was borrowed.
Section II. The insights into the mode of abstraction and inferability come variously from Plato and Aristotle, British empiricists and associationists, Leibniz and Quine (identity of indiscernibles and indiscernibility of identicals), Renaissance pictorial artists and Gestalt psychologists (figure, foreground, background), the Gelican, insight about differences of degree graduating into differences of kind, and the mathematical notion of ‘function’.
The insights into the mode of concretion and ‘participation’ come variously from the German idealists and Coleridge and the nineteenth-century reconstruction of ‘primitive’ mentality by certain students of antiquity and contemporary ‘primitive’ peoples. The notion of ‘participation’ of course goes back to plato. Comparable are ancient Indian notions of the vyakti and bhakti.
The ‘starry heavens’ is, of course, much exercised over the question-Can human u understanding hypes bypass language? Can we think without language?
Descartes’ ‘innate ideas’ and Kant’s ‘categories of understanding’ introduce the notion that the furniture of man’s understanding was given to him as natural and therefore universal endowment. Chomsky transferred the argument from categories of thought to categories of language being natural and universal. There was a quite difference line of thinking which thought of categories of understanding being inferable form language and so language-specific: Humboldt, Sapir, Whor are the important names associated with it. The impossibility of translation without residue impressed not only poets and their translators but also a hard-headed thinker like Quine (1960: chapter 2). Finally, students of human speech were impressed by the early learning of sentence tone and emphasis and pauses and their widely shared patterns.
Section III. We have preferred the value-neutral terms ‘first language’ and ‘own language’ to the omnibus tongue’. (A mother tongue is of course not necessarily one’s mother’s tongue but one that, like one’s motherland, a person expects to draw emotional sustenance form.)
Man’s initial conception of language as an innate medium of understanding has been enshrined in myths of understanding being God’s gift. (The myth of the Tower of Babel is of course of a quite different colour.) The conception of language as a means of communication became common wisdom in the West from the time of the Enlightenment—motivated by the impulse to desacralize and demystify language by showing it up as only a practical tool.
Indians have been acutely aware of language variation—consider the Hindi saying (which has equivalents in other Indians languages): Kos Kos par pānī badale, bārah kos par bānt, i.e. ‘(underground) water differs every kosa, speech differs every twelve kosas’ (kroša in Sanskrit is a little over three kilometers).
Ancient Indians distinguished between direct and displaced modes of speech (vācyārtha-vṛtti and lakṣaṇa-vṛtti) and again between bare and enriched modes of speech (abhidhā-vṛtti and vyanjan-vṛtti).
In connection with the debates concerning language-related practical activities (sections III, V, VI), see Kelkar 1985 (on translation); 1969 (on second language teaching); 1982 (on the medium of teaching); 1984 (rhetoric and popular literature); 1983 and 1984b (literary and interpretation/response).
It was the linguist Jobs (1950: p. 701) who reminds us that language is ‘peculiar among mathematical systems in that is abuts upon reality in two places instead of one.’
The triad Language: Thought: Reality of contemporary Western philosophy is comparable to Bhartṛhaṛi’s traid: šabda: jñāna: arha (šabda is speech, jñāna is understanding, and artha is message to which speech is directed).
The excluded middle of course alludes to the third Law of Thought in Aristotelian logic.
Section IV. When the ancient Indians considered the ‘signifying power of speech’ (šabda- šakti/vṛtti) from the speaker’s point of view, then they also called it ukti ‘speech-selecting power of artha’. In connection with the substitution of understanding for thought as the second member of the Language traid, consider the following: For the ancient Indians jñāna (understanding) was of two kinds: smṛti (recalled experience, memory) and anubhava (on-going experience). The latter in turn was of two kinds: yathārtha, pram (valid understanding, knowledge) and ayathārtha, pramā (invalid understanding, error). Further, ancient Indians with the doctrine of prathibhā (Bhartṛhari, Abhinavagupta, and others). In the West it came with the Romantics. (‘Divine madness in Plato’s Cratylus is a very poor approximation indeed.)
In connection with the distinction between Topic and Context, especially in relation to language and its use, consider the following: The distinction between prakarṇa and prasaṇga has been traditional in India. The Western thinkers to emphasize it initially were Pierce and the later Writtgenstein. The confusion, however, has not been wholly removed and shows up, for example, in which drawing the border between semantics and pragmatics. When applying Piere’s triad.
Section V. The choice of the term ‘speech act’ (Searle 1962) for what we have called language act is rather unfortunate in that Bühler had earlier more appropriately used it for the act of speaking (at the level of the vehicle).
The distinction between Interpretation and Response followed in the wake of the one between Topic and Context.
The anthropologists remind us that human artifacts and acts are open to non-standard use as illustrated by the hammer and the coffee pounding examples are of course comparable to lakṣaṇā and vyañjanā (see Note to Section III), displacement and enrichment. The French Struralists emphasized and generalized the notion of the Text.
For the distinction between names and terms in language and the distinction between šāstra-pratyakṣa (what is presented in a technical discipline) and kāvya-pratyakṣa (what is presented in a technical discipline) and kāvya-pratyakṣa (what is presented in a literary work) on the one hand and loka-vārtta (what is reported by people in the ordinary course) on the other hand.
The distinction proposed here between descriptive statements and ascriptive statements is an anthropologically slanted reformulation of the distinction between facts and interpretations and between value-neutral and evaluative-persuasive statements. Ascriptive statements convey insights rather than facts; they convey responses or attitudes rather than merely report on their presence.
While Kant argued that judgements of taste (one kind of ascriptive statements) cannot be reduced to conceptual descriptions (one kind of descriptive statements), Moore extended the argument to the domain of morality. For Kant moral judgements were essentially prescriptive rather than inscriptive or ascriptive.
For Freud, any piece of language use had a genesis in life: it was either a concealed codification of interests (false consciousness) or a justification of interests (legitimating ideology).
Section VI. For an earlier look at the two styles of the philosophy of understanding and reality, see Kelkar 1980b (where I associated these with certain debates in the philosophy of language). Falling modicum of harmony between man and the condition humaine, suicide and murder are round the corner. This alludes to Albert Camus’ observation that the central question of ethics is suicide and the central question of politics is murder. (I should be grateful if any reader could place it for me.)
Human motivation gets crucially threaded into the maintenance of this harmony by way of the presupposition of our trust (or mistrust) in other people’s understanding or coping or for that matter in our own, in the transparency and efficacy of language, and in the friendliness of life and reality. Our childhood matters.
I cannot resist here the temptation to correlate the Style and Missions of the Philosophy of Coping and Life with the standards in the complex tapestry of Hinduism.
Style I: those who depend on karma, tantra, sādhanā
Style II: those who depend on, l īlā sahajabhāva, prasāda
Mission I: mission of the sāmsārika; abhyadaya
Mission II: mission of the mumuksu: niḥšroyas.
Thus, bhakti could be seen as a combination of Style II and Mission II, Yajña as a combination of Style I and Mission I, and so forth.
REFERENCES
Martin Joos, ‘Description of language desing’ in Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 1950, 22:6:701-8.
Ashok R. Kelkar, ‘Language teaching’: a perspective’ in Conference on the Methodology of Teaching Indian languages as Second Languages in Secondary Schools, Proceedings, Ministry of Education, Government of India, New Delhi 1969, pp. 91-103.
-----Prolegomena to an understanding of semiosis and culture, Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysore, 1980a (earlier version in 1975).
-----Review of Languages in foucs . . . in memeory of Yehoshua Bar-Hillel, Asa Kasher (ed.,) 1977, Indain Philosophical Quarterly, new series, 1980b 13:342-5.
-----‘What English can (and cannot) do for our young, in The Literary Criterion, 17:1:46-55, Mysore; reprinted in New Quest, no. 40, Pune, 1982, 221-7.
-----‘The meaning of a poem and the meaning of poetry’, unpublished typescript, Marathi version in Saundaryavicāra, Bombay 1983; Hindi version in Pūrvagraha no. 56-57,
-----‘Art as education’, in New Quest 1984a, no. 43, Pune, 31-6; Marathi version in Alocana 22:11, Bombay, 1984 2-13; Hindi version in Pūravagraha 12:6, Bhopal, 1986, 78-84.
-----‘The semiotics of technical names and terms’, Recherches Smiotiques/Semiotic Inquiry, 4:3, Toronto, 1984b, 303-26.
-----‘To translate or not to translate?’, Méta: Journal des traducteurs, 30:3, Montreal, 1985, 211-23.
-----‘Style and tehnique’, in Suresh Kumar (ed.), Stylistics and Text Analysis, Bahri, New Delhi, 1987, 1-16; Marathi version in Marāṭhti šaill-vicāra, Pune, 1985; Hindi version in Chandrabhan Rawat, Dilipsingh, (ed.), šailltattva . . . Hyderabad, 1988.
Willard Van Orman Quine, Word and Object, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1960.
J.R. Searle, ‘Meaning and speech acts’, Philosophical Review, 1962,
Paul Zipt, ‘On H.P. Grice’s account of meaning’, in Analysis, 28, 1967, 1-8.
COLOPHON:
*Earlier versions of portions of this were presented orally at the Department of Philosophy, University of Poona in February 1991; at the Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages, Hyderabad in July-August 1991; and at the Department of English, Nagpur University, in November 1991, and the present version stands benefited by the discussions that followed these. The present version was presented at the seminar on Language, Culture, and Cognition at Nehru Museum and Library, New Delhi, March 1992, under the auspices of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. It was published in Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research 9 : 3 : 1 – 28,1992. It was also incorporated, slightly revised, as chapter of in Ashok R. Kelkar’s Language in a semiotic perspective, Pune, Shubhada – Saraswat, 1997. The subtitle is new.
