[Xmca-l] Re: Saussure vs Peirce

[James Ma]

Andy, this sounds rather unwise - I'm afraid your line of argument is not
entirely tenable.
I'll get back to you again when I have more time.
James

*_______________________________________________________*

*James Ma  Independent Scholar *
*https://oxford.academia.edu/JamesMa
<https://oxford.academia.edu/JamesMa>   *

On Tue, 1 Jan 2019 at 22:54, Andy Blunden <andyb@marxists.org> wrote:

> It is clearly wrong to say that we can't study language objectively
> because we exist and think in it - in speech and writing, language is
> objective and actual, so we can also observe it. But to study language
> objectively, from "outside," requires the student to acquire a certain
> distance from it. Teaching grammar is one way of achieving that, even
> writing too, I guess, and anyone who learns a second language has a point
> from which to view their first language. Thus we can learn that "Je ne sais
> pas" is not necessarily a double negative. But is the interviewer who asks
> an artist to explain their painting failing to stand outside language to
> see that there is something else. Like the psychologists who ask subjects
> questions and take the answer to be what the person "really" thought. It's
> the old problem of Kant's supposed "thing-in-itself" beyond experience
> which (in my opinion) Hegel so thoroughly debunked
>
> Andy
> ------------------------------
> Andy Blunden
> http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
> On 2/01/2019 7:46 am, David Kellogg wrote:
>
> Happy new year to all, especially to all us happy pigs born in a pig year.
>
> Yes, "absurd" is too strong: it is possible to construct a context in
> which "I think" isn't a grammatical metaphor for "may", "should", or "it is
> possible". But of course the whole post was a semantic metaphor for James'
> statement that you cannot study language objectively and use it at the same
> time.
>
> And semantics is the weak point of Saussure. The problem is that there
> isn't anything "arbitraire" or conventional about semantics: to say that
> semantics is arbitrary is essentially to say that thinking is arbitrary:
> that there is no rational reason why we think of time as tense and entity
> as number. It's not just that we can't think any other way; it's that we
> have to grow crops and teach children in real time, and we have to gather
> food and cook it in real numbers.
>
> Language is arbitrary (i.e. "subjective") at only one point: phonetics.
> But even with phonetics (paradoxically the easiest to measure objectively)
> you have to deal with the fact that humans make a finite number of sounds,
> and  only a small subset of these are maximally distinguishable at a
> distance. That's why (another paradox) at the very time that Saussure was
> developing a purely idealist, subjectivist study of language, teachers were
> creating the international phonetic alphabet we still use today. It's a
> menu, and menus suggest some element of choice. But choices can be
> constrained, and contraints are always motivated.
>
> Having twelve months and three hundred and sixty five days a year only
> seems "arbitrary" when you are not a farmer.If you were born in the pig
> year (as I was) this is a particularly auspicious year, particularly if you
> are completing your fifth complete cycle of twelve years (as I am). But the
> reason why five cycles of twelve years is considered particularly
> auspicious is no more arbitrary than the choice of the pig to name the
> year: it's a likespan of sixty years, which in Confucian times was
> considered just about ideal.
>
> David Kellogg
> Sangmyung University
>
> New in *Language and Literature*, co-authored with Fang Li:
> Mountains in labour: Eliot’s ‘Atrocities’ and Woolf’s
> alternatives
> Show all authors
>
> https://doi.org/10.1177/0963947018805660
>
>
>
>
> On Tue, Jan 1, 2019 at 2:45 PM Rein Raud <rein.raud@tlu.ee> wrote:
>
>> Happy New Year, David,
>>
>> Why do you say that (a) is absurd? Let us assume that this is what a
>> scholar tells herself after a long internal thought-chain, weighing the
>> pros and cons of a certain argument about how to study the human body,
>> finally arriving at an unexpected conclusion, perhaps persuaded by someone
>> else’s work. And at this point she says to herself “Hey, come on, I don't
>> really think we can study the human body objectively, do I?”
>>
>> “Thinking something” (endorsing a particular claim) and “thinking”
>> (entertaining certain mental processes) are not the same thing, even though
>> conflated in the English word “think”. But in the first case you can
>> substitute it with some synonyms (“reckon”, for example), while in others
>> you cannot. You ask “can you write "I don't think" without thinking?” but
>> you probably wouldn’t ask “can you write "I don't reckon" without
>> reckoning?”
>>
>> Best wishes for 2019 to the whole community,
>>
>> Rein
>>
>> **********************************************
>> Rein Raud
>> Professor of Asian and Cultural Studies, Tallinn University
>> Uus-Sadama 5, Tallinn 10120 Estonia
>> www.reinraud.com
>>
>>
>> “Meaning in Action: Outline of an Integral Theory of Culture”(Polity 2016)
>> <http://politybooks.com/a-new-look-at-culture-as-such/>
>> “Practices of Selfhood” (with Zygmunt Bauman, Polity 2015)
>> <http://politybooks.com/bookdetail/?isbn=9780745690162>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 1 Jan 2019, at 07:29, David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Suppose I say something like this:
>>
>> "I don't think we can study the human body objectively because we are
>> already users of bodies when studying them, i.e. we must remain insiders of
>> our bodies in order to study them, plus the fact that we have the will to
>> embodiment, so to speak."
>>
>> I might be comfortable with a statement like this if I read through it
>> quickly and I don't think about it for too long, provided I am in good
>> health and don't require a doctor (If I fall seriously ill and I go to a
>> doctor, and receive a statement like this, I will probably want a second
>> opinion).
>>
>> But alas, I am arrested by the first three words. What does it mean to
>> say "I don't think"? Can you write "I don't think" without thinking? Is
>> this an instance of aphophasis, like "not to mention"?
>>
>> Because  I do study language--and study it objectively--I know that "i
>> don't think" is an interpersonal metaphor: it's a modal, a statement of
>> probability, like the expression "cannot" (which is also a contradiction,
>> when you think about it, because there isn't any such thing as negative
>> probability).
>>
>> This is easy to prove. You just add a tag:
>>
>> a) "I don't think we can study the human body objectively, do I?"
>> b) "I don't think we can study the human body objectively, can we?"
>>
>> It should be obvious that a) is absurd, and b) is what is meant. But
>> isn't that an objective test? Or do you just mean that the phenomena of
>> language don't appear under a microscope?
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> David Kellogg
>> Sangmyung University
>>
>> New in *Language and Literature*, co-authored with Fang Li:
>> Mountains in labour: Eliot’s ‘Atrocities’ and Woolf’s
>> alternatives
>> Show all authors
>>
>> https://doi.org/10.1177/0963947018805660
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Jan 1, 2019 at 4:52 AM James Ma <jamesma320@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Andy, here're my thoughts with respect to your message:
>>>
>>> I think "default", as a state of the human mind, is intuitive and *a
>>> posteriori* rather than of something we get hung up on deliberately or
>>> voluntarily. This state of mind is also multifaceted, depending on the
>>> context in which we find ourselves. Perhaps there might be a prototype of
>>> default that is somehow intrinsic, but I'm not sure about that.
>>>
>>> Yes, Saussure's structuralism is profoundly influential, without which
>>> post-Saussurean thought, including post-structuralism, wouldn't have
>>> existed. Seemingly, none of these theorists could have worked out their
>>> ideas without the inspiration and challenge of Saussure. Take for example
>>> the Russian linguist Jakobson, which I think would suffice (never mind
>>> those Francophone geniuses you might have referred to!). Jakobson extended
>>> and modified Saussure's signs, using communicative functions as the object
>>> of linguistic studies (instead of standardised rules of a given language,
>>> i.e. *langue* in Saussure's terms). He replaced langue with "code" to
>>> denote the goal-directedness of communicative functions. Each of the codes
>>> was thus associated with its own langue as a larger system.
>>>
>>> It seems to me that Saussure's semiology is not simply dualistic.
>>> There's more to it, e.g. the system of signification bridging between a
>>> concept (signified) and a sound image (signifier). Strictly speaking, the
>>> system of signification is not concerned with language but linguistics
>>> within which language lends itself to scrutiny and related concepts become
>>> valid. From Jakobson's viewpoint, this system is more than a normalised
>>> collective norm; it contains personal meanings not necessarily compatible
>>> with that norm. Saussure would say this norm is the *parole* that
>>> involves an individual's preference and creativity. I find Jakobson's code
>>> quite liberating - it helps explain the workings of Chinese dialects
>>> (different to dialects within the British English), e.g. the grammatical
>>> structure of Shanghainese, which is in many aspects at variance with
>>> Mandarin (the official language or predominant dialect).
>>>
>>> By the way, I don't think we can study a language objectively because we
>>> are already users of that language when studying it, i.e. we must remain
>>> insiders of that language in order to study it, plus the fact that we have
>>> the will to meaning, so to speak.
>>>
>>> James
>>> *_______________________________________________________*
>>>
>>> *James Ma  Independent Scholar *
>>> *https://oxford.academia.edu/JamesMa
>>> <https://oxford.academia.edu/JamesMa>    *
>>>
>>> On Fri, 21 Dec 2018 at 03:03, Andy Blunden <andyb@marxists.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Getting to your first topic, now, James ...
>>>>
>>>> I think it is inescapable for any of us, in everyday interactions, to
>>>> "default" to the Saussurian way of seeing things, that is to say, signs as
>>>> pointing to objects, in a structure of differences, abstracted from
>>>> historical development. The structural view always gives us certain
>>>> insights which can be invisible otherwise. But like a lot of things, in
>>>> making this point, Saussure set up this dichotomy with himself on one side
>>>> and condemned half a century of his followers in Structuralism to a
>>>> one-sided view of the world ... which made the poststructuralists look like
>>>> geniuses of course, when they stepped outside this cage
>>>>
>>>> What do you  think?
>>>>
>>>> Andy
>>>> ------------------------------
>>>> Andy Blunden
>>>> http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
>>>> On 21/12/2018 7:56 am, James Ma wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Andy, thank you for your message. Just to make a few brief points,
>>>> linking with some of your comments:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> First, I have a default sense of signs based on Saussurean linguistics
>>>> (semiology); however, I don't think I "strangely leap from Peirce's
>>>> semiotics to Saussure's semiology".  When I read Peirce and Vygotsky on
>>>> signs, I often have a Saussurean imagery present in my mind.  As I see it,
>>>> Saussurean semiology is foundational to all language studies, such as the
>>>> evolution of language in terms of e.g. semantic drift and narrowing.
>>>> Speaking more broadly, in my view, both synchronic and diachronic approach
>>>> to language have relevance for CHAT.  Above all, *a priori *hermeneutic
>>>> methodology can benefit further development of semiotic methodology within
>>>> CHAT, helping us to come to grips with what Max Fisch, the key Peircean
>>>> exponent, referred to as "the most essential point", i.e. the tripartite of
>>>> thought as semiosis, namely sign-interpretation or sign action.  For
>>>> example, how sign action might be implicated in culture and consciousness.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>
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