[Xmca-l] Re: Saussure vs Peirce

Fri Mar 15 00:27:58 PDT 2019

Hi everyone.

I just happen to read this old thread.

It is my impression when I was doing my PhD and tried to get around the
notion of language and more into the notion of speaking (or communication
if you will) that De Saussure actually was inspired in many ways by Hegel's
theory of systems when producing his categories of langage/langue/parole.
Furthermore, it seems than Hegel anticipated many Saussurian ideas on the
arbitrariness of the linguistic sign, its relationship with concepts, and
writing systems in general.

As you can clearly see when translating Vygotsky's Thought and
language/Thinking and speaking we struggle with Saussurean terminology to
convey what that "language" is.

There are many passages of the Cours that match Hegel's Encyclopedia.

I could not address all these issues in my thesis and I opted for deploying
the notion of discourse instead of speech. In that way I got rid of the
notion of language as system comprising all utterances (much or less as all
commodities form the market). However, I did not solve the underlying issue
of how abbreviation works in discourse (or language).

There are also many ontological problems with Vygotsky's notion of
interiorization and inner speech if we get rid of a Saussurean
understanding of language as system or what linguists call a segregationist
view of language (language as a reified object that only makes sense within
an objectified system).

Best,

Arturo

On Thu, 3 Jan 2019 at 02:04, James Ma <jamesma320@gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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