[Xmca-l] language and semiotics
Andy Blunden
andyb@marxists.org
Sat Dec 8 17:53:14 PST 2018
Thank you for raising this issue, Greg. I have been
participating in an academia.edu session on my origins of
language paper concurrently with little overlap between
participants. However, I am struck by the persistence of
this claim, viz., that language is a system of signs, and
sign-use is universal in the animal kingdom (and Peirce
would correctly say: "not only animals, but all processes
without exception"). The issue is not one of Peirce's
Semiotics, but simply the view that the subjective element
is irrelevant to language.
Can some of the linguists on this list tell me how this
claim is usually dealt with. Vygotsky is clear enough (as I
read him anyway): "a word without meaning is just a sound"
but how does linguistics more widely rebut the claim that
language, however simple (i.e., e.g. a one-word sentence
lacking recursion) is not simply a sign?
Andy
------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Blunden
http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
On 3/12/2018 4:08 pm, Greg Thompson wrote:
> Interesting and very helpful Andy.
> Thanks very much for your lovely explanations.
> Very best,
> greg
>
> On Sun, Dec 2, 2018 at 9:35 PM Andy Blunden
> <andyb@marxists.org <mailto:andyb@marxists.org>> wrote:
>
> Greg, those currents of formal analysis which, like
> Peirce's semiotics, take the subject (in the sense of
> a moral agent) out of a process have an important
> place in analysis. The same could be said of
> Structuralism and even Marx's Capital (though it could
> be argued that for Marx capital is a subject). One can
> of course study language from a purely structural
> standpoint, or purely semiotic standpoint. But my
> point is that language (languaging?) is not just a
> system of signs. Language is an essential part of a
> specific form of life, namely human life, in which
> consciousness mediates between stimulus and response,
> and that consciousness cannot in itself be a sign.
>
> I think Peirce says that the self is a concentrated
> group, or something of the kind. Peirce is fine. But
> subjects do not (generally) create words /de novo/;
> interactions (with other and self) is mediated by use
> of an already-objectively-existing culture. Semiotics
> /can/ be used to analyse that objectively-existing
> culture, but close as it comes to a concept of the
> Subject, I don't think it can get there.
>
> Andy
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> Andy Blunden
> http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
> On 3/12/2018 1:44 pm, Greg Thompson wrote:
>> Not "behind" Andy - you're playing a different game!
>> (And it happens to be one in which I am terribly
>> "behind"!)
>>
>> And I generally agree with your appraisal, but it
>> makes me wonder what you've concluded with regard to
>> Colapietro's characterization of Peirce's notion of
>> the self? I believe you were the one who shared it
>> with me but from your tone here I assume that you
>> feel that it falls short in theorizing a
>> "subject"/self. Care to expand on that any?
>> Particularly with regard to the shortcomings of the
>> theory?
>>
>> -greg
>> [p.s. And perhaps instead of "playing games" we might
>> turn the metaphor back to the original thread by
>> noting(!) that we are simply "playing different tunes"?
>> Often discordant but occasionally resonant...]
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Dec 2, 2018 at 6:16 PM Andy Blunden
>> <andyb@marxists.org <mailto:andyb@marxists.org>> wrote:
>>
>> Thanks Greg. It's good to hear that I am
>> thoroughly behind the game! :) Thank you.
>>
>> I think Peirce's semiotics has the great
>> advantage in that it does /not /include the
>> category of Subject in its triads (e.g. sign |
>> interpretant | object). This means that it can be
>> used for the analysis of /objective/ processes.
>> When used in this way it does not imply
>> "thinking" at all. That virtue of Peirce's
>> semiotics was the basis of my objection to
>> James's observation. Speech and gesture has a
>> subject.
>>
>> The other minor point I would make about your
>> very erudite response is that I think we should
>> not be too apologetic about using the concept of
>> "mind." True, mind is not a sensible entity, but
>> in all human interactions we deduce the state of
>> minds from the observable behaviour, and in fact
>> (scientific or everyday) human behaviour is
>> incomprehensible without the presumption that it
>> is mindful to this or that extent. Otherwise, we
>> become Behaviourists, and Chomsky would murder us! :)
>>
>> Andy
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> Andy Blunden
>> http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
>> On 3/12/2018 11:53 am, Greg Thompson wrote:
>>> Andy,
>>>
>>> My short response would depend on whether you'd
>>> prefer to be critical or charitable toward
>>> linguistic anthropologists.
>>>
>>> The critical approach would say that with a few
>>> exceptions (e.g., Elinor Ochs, Paul Kockelman,
>>> Elizabeth Mertz, John Lucy, among others), you
>>> are right.
>>>
>>> The charitable approach would say that
>>> linguistic anthropologists are in fact dealing
>>> with precisely the things that you are talking
>>> about. Most of the ones that I know are
>>> anti-Chomskyian, to say the least. Most of them
>>> are grappling with issues of practice, not just
>>> studying formal structures that exist in
>>> someplace called "the mind" (where is that
>>> exactly?). In fact, one of the greatest insults
>>> to the linguistic anthropologists that I know is
>>> to call them a "butterfly collector" - that is
>>> to say, a mere documenter of language variation
>>> across the globe. Most of the ones I know are in
>>> fact very mindful of understanding the practical
>>> consequences of semiotic forms. In his book
>>> Talking Heads Benjamin Lee makes precisely the
>>> point that you are making through his deployment
>>> of Peirce to Critique Saussure. Peirce offers a
>>> means of grasping semiosis as a lived practice
>>> rather than one that exists only in the "mind"
>>> (as Saussure's approach to semiotics would suggest).
>>>
>>> The critical approach is nice because you can
>>> just dispense with linguistic anthropology and
>>> all their gobbly-gook jargon as irrelevant. The
>>> charitable approach might suggest that we should
>>> at least acknowledge their project. That's all I
>>> was hoping to do. I figured that there might be
>>> a few who are interested, but most on the
>>> listserve will find that it wasn't worth
>>> investing the time - and I don't blame them! (as
>>> someone in this goofy world of academia, I'm
>>> very sensitive to the fact that learning the
>>> language of an entirely new system is a major
>>> time commitment and only worth it in rare cases).
>>>
>>> I think things get a bit more complicated when
>>> we get to the issue of the semiosis of non-human
>>> agents that you seemed to be poking at (e.g.,
>>> Eduardo Kohn's book How Forests Think). I
>>> understand that you are very much a humanist and
>>> don't like this approach for some very
>>> fundamental reasons. I'm not entirely committed
>>> to this position (Kohn's) and so I'm not the
>>> best person to make the case for this position -
>>> unless you are really genuinely interested. And
>>> besides, I'm already well beyond your one screen
>>> rule!
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> greg
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sat, Dec 1, 2018 at 5:28 PM Andy Blunden
>>> <andyb@marxists.org <mailto:andyb@marxists.org>>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> So I gather confirmation from your message,
>>> Greg: "most of the anthropologists I know,
>>> linguistic or otherwise, don't have much
>>> interest in talking about such things as
>>> psychological functioning" and therefore, it
>>> seems to me, little interest in what people
>>> do as well as what they think. In other
>>> words, the turn to seeing language as a
>>> system of Peircean signs is an entirely
>>> *formal* project. Yes, the babbling of a
>>> brook or the babbling of a band of monkeys
>>> can be formally analysed with the same set
>>> of concepts as the babbling of a group of
>>> humans in conversation. But this is purely
>>> formal, superficial and obscures what is
>>> expressed and transacted in the human babble.
>>>
>>> I can understand the fascination in such
>>> formal disciplines, I accept that Peircean
>>> Semiotics can be a tool of analysis, and
>>> often insights come out from such formal
>>> disciplines relevant to the real world
>>> (mathematics being the supreme example), but
>>> ....! One really has to keep in mind that
>>> words are not Peircean signs. To answer the
>>> question of how it is that humans alone have
>>> language by saying that everything has
>>> language, even inanimate processes (and this
>>> is how I interpret the equation of language
>>> with Peircean signs), is somewhat more than
>>> missing the point.
>>>
>>> As an example of how such formal processes
>>> lead to grave errors is the Language
>>> Acquisition Device "proved" to exist by
>>> Chomsky's formal analysis of language. And
>>> yet to hold that an actual biological,
>>> neuronal formation as a LAD exists in all
>>> human beings in quite inconsistent with the
>>> foundations of biology, i.e., Darwinian
>>> evolution. Either Darwin or Chomsky, but not
>>> both. Which tells me that there is a problem
>>> with this formal analysis, even though I
>>> gasp in wonder every time Google manages to
>>> correctly parse an ordinary language
>>> question I ask it and deliver very relevant
>>> answers.
>>>
>>> Andy
>>>
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>> Andy Blunden
>>> http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
>>>
>>> On 2/12/2018 2:51 am, Greg Thompson wrote:
>>>> [I hesitate to send a post like this to
>>>> this group for precisely the reasons Helena
>>>> mentioned previously (the proliferation of
>>>> technical languages in different fields and
>>>> the time-intensive labor of translating
>>>> terms/meanings of entire systems of
>>>> thinking from one of these fields to the
>>>> next). Add the fact that there are few who
>>>> have much interest in one of the field of
>>>> linguistic anthropology (and esp. how ling
>>>> anthro has taken up Peicean semiotics - a
>>>> tangle of words in its own right), and this
>>>> means the following post will likely remain
>>>> an orphan (not at all because of anyone's
>>>> ill intentions but simply because this is
>>>> an impossible situation for anyone to
>>>> commit to learning an entirely new language
>>>> for talking about language!).]
>>>>
>>>> Yes James, as a Peircean, I assume that you
>>>> would point to (!) the indexical and iconic
>>>> potentials of SPOKEN language while noting
>>>> that this flattens the oft-made distinction
>>>> between gesture and the spoken word? Our
>>>> dominant ideology of language tends to
>>>> assume that spoken language is (only?)
>>>> symbolic and gesture is only indexical and
>>>> iconic. Peirce's notion of indexical and
>>>> iconic functions offers us a way into
>>>> seeing how spoken language is also
>>>> indexical and iconic (as opposed to
>>>> Saussure who dismissed them out of hand -
>>>> e.g., in the Course he dismisses
>>>> onomatopoeia (iconic) and "shifters"
>>>> (indexical) as irrelevant to his project).
>>>>
>>>> Following Peirce's vision, Roman Jakobson
>>>> was one of the first to point to the
>>>> problem of this dominant ideology of
>>>> language, and Michael Silverstein has made
>>>> a rather substantial career off of this
>>>> simple point, first elaborated in his
>>>> famous 1976 paper on "shifters" and since
>>>> then in numerous other works. Many others
>>>> working in linguistic anthropology have
>>>> spent the last 40 years expanding on this
>>>> project by exploring the indexical and
>>>> iconic nature of spoken language in the
>>>> concepts of "indexicality" and
>>>> "iconization". More recently linguistic
>>>> anthropologists have considered the
>>>> processes by which sign-functions can shift
>>>> from one function to another - e.g.,
>>>> rhematization - from indexical or symbolic
>>>> to iconic (see Susan Gal and Judy Irvine's
>>>> work), and iconization - from symbolic or
>>>> iconic to indexical (see Webb Keane's and
>>>> Chris Ball's work). And others have looked
>>>> at more basic features of sign-functioning
>>>> such as the realization of qualia (see Lily
>>>> Chumley and Nicholas Harkness' special
>>>> issue in Anthro theory).
>>>>
>>>> The relevance of all this for the present
>>>> list serve is that the processes being
>>>> described by these linguistic
>>>> anthropologists are fundamental to
>>>> understanding human psychological
>>>> functioning and yet most of the
>>>> anthropologists I know, linguistic or
>>>> otherwise, don't have much interest in
>>>> talking about such things as psychological
>>>> functioning (one exception here is Paul
>>>> Kockelman, e.g., in his book Person, Agent,
>>>> Subject, Self - although beware that his
>>>> writing is just as dense as Peirce's!).
>>>> Anyway, I suspect that this could be a
>>>> particularly productive intersection for
>>>> development.
>>>>
>>>> Cheers,
>>>> -greg
>>>>
>>>> On Fri, Nov 30, 2018 at 8:40 AM HENRY
>>>> SHONERD <hshonerd@gmail.com
>>>> <mailto:hshonerd@gmail.com>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Right on, James!
>>>>
>>>>> On Nov 30, 2018, at 12:16 AM, James Ma
>>>>> <jamesma320@gmail.com
>>>>> <mailto:jamesma320@gmail.com>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Henry, personally I prefer Xmca-I
>>>>> discussion to be exploratory and free
>>>>> style, allowing for the coexistence of
>>>>> subjectness and subjectless. When it
>>>>> comes to scholarly writing, we know we
>>>>> will switch the code.
>>>>>
>>>>> James
>>>>>
>>>>> HENRY SHONERD <hshonerd@gmail.com
>>>>> <mailto:hshonerd@gmail.com>> 于
>>>>> 2018年11月29日周四 18:58写道：
>>>>>
>>>>> James,
>>>>> This conversation has been so
>>>>> satisfying I don’t want to let go
>>>>> of it, so I hope I am not tiring
>>>>> you or others with all the
>>>>> connections I find. But, in the
>>>>> spirit of Alfredo’s post, I’ll
>>>>> just keep on talking and remark on
>>>>> how the duck tail hair cut is a
>>>>> rich gesture, an important concept
>>>>> in this subject line. Gesture is
>>>>> an aspect of communication present
>>>>> in many species. Hence, the
>>>>> importance of gesture as a
>>>>> rudimentary form of language with
>>>>> evolutionary results in human
>>>>> language. Maybe this is a reach,
>>>>> but I see the business of quotes
>>>>> in the subject line now taking
>>>>> place (Anna Stetsenko and
>>>>> Anne-Nelly Perret-Clermont,
>>>>> contributing right now) on the
>>>>> last chapter of Vygotsky’s Speech
>>>>> and Language as an issue of
>>>>> gesture. Language, written
>>>>> language in this case, is limited
>>>>> in its ability to provide nuance.
>>>>> Writing without quotes “gestured”,
>>>>> pointed to to author sources
>>>>> familar in the day that Vygotsky
>>>>> wrote, such that quotes were not
>>>>> necessary. Dan Slobin,
>>>>> psycholinguist at Univ of Calf,
>>>>> wrote that two charges of language
>>>>> where in “tension”: 1) make
>>>>> yourself clear and 2) get it said
>>>>> before losing the thread of
>>>>> thinking and talking. Gesture, I
>>>>> would like to argue, is an aspect
>>>>> of discourse that helps to address
>>>>> this tension. A turn (in
>>>>> discourse) is a gesture, with
>>>>> temporal constraints that belie
>>>>> the idea that a single turn can
>>>>> ever be totally clear in and of
>>>>> itself. Writing, as we are doing
>>>>> now, is always dialogic, even a
>>>>> whole book, is a turn in
>>>>> discourse. And we keep on posting
>>>>> our turns.
>>>>> Henry
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>> On Nov 29, 2018, at 8:56 AM,
>>>>>> James Ma <jamesma320@gmail.com
>>>>>> <mailto:jamesma320@gmail.com>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Henry, Elvis Presley is spot
>>>>>> on for this subject line!
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The ducktail hairstyle is
>>>>>> fabulous. Funnily
>>>>>> enough, it is what my brother
>>>>>> would always like his 9-year-old
>>>>>> son to have because he has much
>>>>>> thicker hair than most boys.
>>>>>> Unfortunately last year the boy
>>>>>> had a one-day show off in the
>>>>>> classroom and was ticked off
>>>>>> by the school authority (in
>>>>>> China). However, my brother
>>>>>> has managed to
>>>>>> restore the ducktail twice a year
>>>>>> during the boy's long school
>>>>>> holiday in winter and summer!
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I suppose the outlines of
>>>>>> conversation are predictable due
>>>>>> to participants' intersubjective
>>>>>> awareness of the subject.
>>>>>> Yet, the nuances of conversation
>>>>>> (just like each individual's
>>>>>> ducktail unique to himself) are
>>>>>> unpredictable because of the
>>>>>> waywardness of our mind. What's
>>>>>> more, such nuances create the
>>>>>> fluidity of conversation which
>>>>>> makes it difficult (or
>>>>>> even unnecessary) to predict what
>>>>>> comes next - this is perhaps the
>>>>>> whole point that
>>>>>> keeps us talking, as Alfredo
>>>>>> pointed out earlier.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> James
>>>>>>
>
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