The very fact you are able to understand the words you're reading right now—that we are all able to communicate with each other using language—means we must share a vast body of beliefs. That’s the central argument of this book:
Truth is the condition that makes language possible.
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Take the last poll: Is reality beyond linguistic expression?
Table of contents with chapter links at the end of each post.
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4
What Language is Not
Language is not a Code
TO SAY LANGUAGE is not a code is to deny any strong notion of literal meaning. Of course, everything depends on what is meant by literal. The word itself is an amusing example of the problem. Etymologically it means something like in the letters of, as if the meaning of a sentence could somehow be physically analyzed and found in the marks on the page.
It turns out the word literal is itself a dead metaphor, the meaning of which we try to express through words such as explicit, non-figurative, or prosaic, the opposite of which we call implicit, figurative, or poetic. These notions overlap, all are vague, and several are metaphorical. Figurative, for example, compares non-literal language to figures or images, and implicit compares that which is indicated but not said to the condition of being hidden within the folds of something, presumably clothing. It is tempting to cut through all this by defining the literal as that which needs no interpretation, that simply gives of itself, or without further ado, the meaning it intends to convey. But then everything depends on what is meant by interpretation.
No part of language is so straightforwardly ‘on the page’ that its comprehension does not require knowledge of the meanings of signs and the rules for their combination. Even so, it’s not enough to consult a dictionary and grammar book. Understanding ordinary, natural language requires more than merely following the conventions that constitute normal grammar and semantics; it requires the principle of generosity, as we’ll soon see.
Coded communication like Morse code, on the other hand, is an invention that operates in a mechanical, rule-governed way, solely through consultation with a code book. Of course, there are similarities between coded communication and natural language—both make use of external symbols which have little to no intuitive connection to the things these signify—but it would be a mistake to say that natural language is a code or even code-like. Natural languages are bursting with figurative speech, but codes are, strictly speaking, literal representations of their meaning. In Morse code, for example, three dots on a page are replaced by the letter s in strict accordance with the rule. So also for the other marks on the page, and when we are done with these replacements, we have, without further ado, the message. Except in the case of telegraphic error, there is no need for any further interpretation to get from Morse to English—but much more will be needed to get from English to the final meaning.
To the extent that natural language is ambiguous, there is, strictly speaking, no message sent. What is sent is instead a sort of half-formed, raw, and rather complicated collection of possibilities that need to be sorted through and ranked in order of plausibility.
Dictionaries may look like code books, but they are far from sufficient for understanding meaning. That is because all natural language is highly ambiguous and therefore requires interpretation even in its most commonplace, unimaginative employment. Indeed, it is in its commonplace employment that interpretation is most needed. Only highly cultivated, artful and perhaps artificial speech makes any pretense to unambiguous language, and it is only such language that suggests (falsely, as we shall see) any serious resemblance to code.
The figurative nature of language is probably most clear in slang—the word cool, for example, or awesome—but this applies equally well to high-toned language (a brilliant scholar) as to mundane utterances (a colossal bore). It turns out that many of what are considered standard, literal meanings of a word are just metaphors that have become so familiar that we no longer think of them as such. These are what we might call dead metaphors. For example:
She had a very fine understanding of the matter.
Sally is a neat housekeeper.
Dead metaphors are all but invisible. Etymology reveals a history of words taking on metaphorical usage and gaining currency until they finally become standard. When they become thoroughly established, we no longer see them as metaphors.
A closer look reveals that even the simplest bits of language turn out to be highly figurative, which means natural language cannot be a code or even like a code, for it includes very little, if anything, that is literally literal. Meaning is almost never on the page or in the letters. It is in their interpretation guided by the principle of generosity.
Language is Not Invented
Like the fire and the wheel, it is sometimes assumed that language is invented. Presumably this is because we think of language as code-like, and codes are invented and sometimes even named for their inventor, like Morse. But since, as we’ve seen, language is not a code, the analogy is suspect. It only takes a little consideration to realize that it is also not an invention, at least not by any standard sense of the word.
Codes and writing symbolize speech, but speech symbolizes thought. The connection of thought to speech is clearly very different and far less direct than the connection between one symbol system to another. It makes little sense to suppose that what is true of codes is also true of speech. One might object that coded and written language can to some degree take on a life of their own and enter into a more direct relationship to thought, which would make them more like natural languages. This may be true, but to whatever extent this happens, it happens through the mysterious processes of evolving usage, not the deliberate processes that characterize invention.
Neither code nor writing could have come into existence had not the spoken language arrived first. Turning thought into speech requires something altogether different from replacing one symbol system with another. Of course, we can’t go back in time to witness the birth of language, its origin can never be known, but whenever anything turns up that is both language-like and clearly an invention, language is already there. Even Esperanto, which is often called an invented language, on closer inspection turns out to be an elaborate code, which is to say it involves translating pre-existing symbols into other symbols.
Not only is there no single example of invented language, but it is hard to imagine how there ever could have been such a thing. Invention presupposes deliberate, self-conscious, and fairly sophisticated thought processes that cannot with real confidence be attributed to creatures who do not speak. We don’t say that beavers invent their dams or that birds invent their calls. We don’t even say chimps invent the tools with which they pull ants out of holes. Invention, at least in the usual sense of the word, seems to presuppose speech; if so, the invention of speech is an incoherent idea.
Language is Not a Convention
If language is neither invention nor code, then it is not likely to rest on consciously-established conventions either. It is difficult to see how language could have arisen from the act of assigning meanings to words since that would require a high level of communication already in place. In other words, a community that is capable of agreeing to conventions must already have a common language. Not only must we already be able to speak, but we must be able to speak about speaking, which amounts to a rather high level of linguistic self-awareness.
In the old speculations on this matter, the anti-conventionalist view was associated with those who considered the relationship between sign and signified in some sense natural. In their view, the first words were expressive song (Jespersen), instinctual interjections (Bleek, Noire), or onomatopoeia, the imitation of animal sounds or sounds that were supposed to be typical of the thing being described (Heyse, Max Mueller). While there may be some truth in these suggestions, my opposition to the conventionalist thesis does not include these.
Whether language originated with nature calls or the Neanderthal equivalent of the Academie Francaise, it seems clear that meaning evolves through usage that is, on the whole, under the conscious control of no one. The current meanings of words have almost nothing to do with the establishment of conventions. We might assume word’s meanings are first learned and then used in combination with one another to make statements which may or may not be true. This is an atomistic view in which the statement’s parts, its words, come first, and the truth of the whole sentence, if it comes at all, limps along behind. But Davidson’s treatment of linguistic irregularity—the whole range of phenomena characterized as malapropism (flamingo dancing, for example), idiolect, and other forms of misuse—suggests language operates through a holistic process that holds truth constant and solves for meaning. In other words, he argues that the truth of a sentence comes first and the meanings of its words are adjusted to make this truth possible. I will go into this in more detail later, but for now it is enough to note that it is not convention that creates the meanings of words, but our beliefs about the world combined with the principle of generosity.
Suppose an auto mechanic from the rural south currently living in New England tells me that in order to deal with my car problem, I’ll need an auto holler. I look at him in genuine confusion, my mind half-forming the question: Can he really think yelling at the car will do any good? But surely not. He goes on to tell me that he’ll call the auto holler from the neighboring town and send it down to Northampton to get my car. He adds that the driver should get here in just a few hours. By this point I realize he is using the word-sound holler as I would use the word-sound hauler, and from that point on everything proceeds smoothly.
There is little mystery here. This is an obvious case of ‘mispronunciation’ or differences in regional dialect, and we figure out the meaning of the strange sign from its context. The initial confusion does not get straightened out by anyone’s explaining to me the conventions of Southern dialect. Instead I presupposed the truth of the mechanic’s speech—in other words, I assumed the mechanic was quite aware that yelling at my car would not solve a thing—and from this presupposition of truth I realized that the meaning of the word-sound holler in his language was hauler in mine. I presupposed the truth and solved for meaning. From now on I will go directly to that meaning whenever speaking to this particular person or to people who speak like him. The point is, the truth of the sentence came first, the word and its meaning came second. I can be sure then that for me, the word did not get its meaning by convention, but by generous interpretation of its usage in accordance with my beliefs about the world.
Suppose that instead of a dialect we were dealing with an idiolect, a deviant usage that is not common to any group, but pertains only to a single person. An example of this might be a philosophy student who keeps calling arguments ad nauseam when he really means ad hominem, or someone who consistently misspells perceive, or someone who pronounces Vermont as if it were Vairmont (I know such a person). It is clear that in such cases we do exactly what we did in the previous one; we use the principle of generosity to establish translations from the idiolect into the public language. Again, communication is not made possible through semantic agreement. Instead it becomes clear that, for whatever reason, the speaker uses language in a different way, and the audience simply figures out what is meant by assuming that the speaker speaks the truth.
In idiolect the deviant usage is consistent, and this helps us see it as a semi-private language. But suppose it is the kind of error that occurs on a single occasion, as when, after a few drinks and, perhaps, a discussion of swamps, I say that I am going to walk the bog. I could be joking, in which case the misuse is intentional, or it could have been a simple slip of the tongue. In both cases the audience does the same thing. They translate bog into dog, which is to say they treat my utterance as a slightly foreign language and translate it into their own, guided by the principle of generosity.
For dialect, idiolect, and slips of the tongue, the deviant word meanings are established not by a table of conventions, but through usage and generosity. In these cases meaning is plastic and takes its shape by conforming to the contours of a presumed shared reality.
We have seen how most, if not all, established usage was once deviant usage that has gone through a process of normalization. I suggested above that this process is governed by the principle of generosity, and that virtually all words have acquired their meanings in ways similar to the discovery of the meaning of holler in the example. I touched on this point in my discussion of etymology, but this is a topic which deserves a chapter of its own.
Table of Contents
What do YOU think?
Do you agree that “meaning evolves through usage that is, on the whole, under the conscious control of no one”?
Does invention presuppose language?
Questions? Ideas? Feel free to comment!
Thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts.
We appreciate your generosity!
Neal, Tina, & Geordie Bear
Truth and Generosity: Chapter 4