[Xmca-l] Re: Saussure vs Peirce

Tue Jan 1 12:46:53 PST 2019

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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