Meaning Of Meaning V 2

John Constable

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780415217330
• eBook ISBN: 9781136350320
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

This is Volume 2 of ten the selected works of I.A. Richards from 1919 to 1938. This book is a study of the difficulties and the influence of language upon thought and the study of that influence, a new avenue of approach to traditional problems hitherto regarded as reserved for the philosopher and the metaphysician, has been found.

CHAPTER ONE

Thoughts, Words and Things

[1] Let us get nearer to the fire, so that we can see what we are saying.

The Bubis of Fernando Po

The influence of Language upon Thought has attracted the attention of the wise and foolish alike, since Lao Tse came long ago to the conclusion:

He who knows does not speak, he who speaks does not know.

Sometimes, in fact, the wise have in this field proved themselves the most foolish. Was it not the great Bentley, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, Archdeacon of Bristol, and holder of two other livings besides, who declared: ‘We are sure, from the names of persons and places mentioned in Scripture before the Deluge, not to insist upon other arguments, that Hebrew was the primitive language of mankind’? On the opposite page are collected other remarks on the subject of language and its Meaning, and whether wise or foolish, they at least raise questions to which, sooner or later, an answer is desirable. In recent years, indeed, the existence and importance of this problem of Meaning have been generally admitted, but by some sad chance those who have attempted a solution have too often been forced to relinquish their ambition – whether through old age, like Leibnitz, or penury, like C. S. Peirce, or both. Even the methods by which it is to be attacked have remained in doubt. Each [2] science has tended to delegate the unpleasant task to another. With the errors and omissions of metaphysicians we shall be much concerned in the sequel, and philologists must bear their share of the guilt. Yet it is a philologist who, of recent years, has, perhaps, realized most clearly the necessity of a broader treatment.

‘Throughout the whole history of the human race’, wrote the late Dr Postgate,

there have been no questions which have caused more heartsearchings, tumults, and devastation than questions of the correspondence of words to facts. The mere mention of such words as ‘religion’, ‘patriotism’, and ‘property’ is sufficient to demonstrate this truth. Now, it is the investigation of the nature of the correspondence between word and fact, to use these terms in the widest sense, which is the proper and the highest problem of the science of meaning. That every living word is rooted in facts of our mental consciousness and history it would be impossible to gainsay; but it is a very different matter to determine what these facts may be. The primitive conception is undoubtedly that the name is indicative, or descriptive, of the thing. From which it would follow at once that from the presence of the name you could argue to the existence of the thing. This is the simple conception of the savage.

In thus stressing the need for a clear analysis of the relation between words and facts as the essential of a theory of Meaning, Dr Postgate himself was fully aware that at some point the philosophical and psychological aspects of that theory cannot be avoided. When he wrote (1896), the hope was not unreasonable that the science of Semantics would do something to bridge the gulf. But, although M. Bréal’s researches drew attention to a number of fascinating phenomena in the history of language, and awakened a fresh interest in the educational possibilities of etymology, the net result was disappointing. That such disappointment was inevitable may be seen, if we consider the attitude to language implied by such a passage as the following. [3] The use of words as though their meaning were fixed, the constant resort to loose metaphor, the hypostatization of leading terms, all indicate an unsuitable attitude in which to approach the question.

Substantives are signs attached to things: they contain exactly that amount of truth which can be contained by a name, an amount which is of necessity small in proportion to the reality of the object. That which is most adequate to its object is the abstract noun, since it represents a simple operation of the mind. When I use the two words compressibility, immortality, all that is to be found in the idea is to be found also in the word. But if I take a real entity, an object existing in nature, it will be impossible for language to introduce into the word all the ideas which this entity or object awakens in the mind. Language is therefore compelled to choose. Out of all the ideas it can choose one only; it thus creates a name which is not long in becoming a mere sign.

For this name to be accepted it must, no doubt, originally possess some true and striking characteristic on one side or another; it must satisfy the minds of those to whom it is first submitted. But this condition is imperative only at the outset. Once accepted, it rids itself rapidly of its etymological signification; otherwise this signification might become an embarrassment. Many objects are inaccurately named, whether through the ignorance of the original authors, or by some intervening change which disturbs the harmony between the sign and the thing signified. Nevertheless, words answer the same purpose as though they were of faultless accuracy. No one dreams of revising them. They are accepted by a tacit consent of which we are not even conscious.

Bréal, Semantics, pp. 171–2.

What exactly is to be made of substantives which ‘contain’ truth, ‘that amount of truth which can be contained by a name’? How can ‘all that is found in the idea be also found in the word’? The conception of language as ‘compelled to choose an idea’, and thereby creating ‘a name, which is not long in becoming a sign’, is an odd one; while ‘accuracy’ and ‘harmony’ are sadly in need of elucidation when applied to naming and to the relation between sign and thing signified respectively. This [4] is not mere captious criticism. The locutions objected to conceal the very facts which the science of language is concerned to elucidate. The real task before that science cannot be successfully attempted without a far more critical consciousness of the dangers of such loose verbiage. It is impossible to handle a scientific matter in such metaphorical terms, and the training of philologists has not, as a rule, been such as to increase their command of analytic and abstract language. The logician would be far better equipped in this respect were it not that his command of language tends to conceal from him what he is talking about and renders him prone to accept purely linguistic constructions, which serve well enough for his special purposes, as ultimates.

How great is the tyranny of language over those who propose to enquire into its workings is well shown in the speculations of the late F. de Saussure, a writer regarded by perhaps a majority of French and Swiss students as having for the first time placed linguistic upon a scientific basis. This author begins by enquiring, ‘What is the object at once integral and concrete of linguistic?’ He does not ask whether it has one, he obeys blindly the primitive impulse to infer from a word some object for which it stands, and sets out determined to find it. But, he continues, speech (le langage), though concrete enough, as a set of events is not integral. Its sounds imply movements of speech, and both, as instruments of thought, imply ideas. Ideas, he adds, have a social as well as an individual side, and at each instant language implies both an established system and an evolution. ‘Thus, from whatever side we approach the question, we nowhere find the integral object of linguistic’ De Saussure does not pause at this point to ask himself what he is looking for, or whether there is any reason why there should be such a thing. He proceeds instead in a fashion familiar in the beginnings of all sciences, and concocts a suitable object – ‘la langue’, the language, as opposed to speech.

What is La langue? For us, it is not to be confounded with [5] speech (le langage); it is only a determinate part of this, an essential part, it is true. It is at once a social product of the faculty of speech, and a collection of necessary conventions adopted by the social body to allow the exercise of this faculty by individuals…. It is a whole in itself and a principle of classification. As soon as we give it the first place among the facts of speech we introduce a natural order in a whole which does not lend itself to any other classification.

La langue is, further:

The sum of the verbal images stored up in all the individuals, a treasure deposited by the practice of speaking in the members of a given community; a grammatical system, virtually existing in each brain, or more exactly in the brains of a body of individuals; for la langue is not complete in any one of them, it exists in perfection only in the mass.¹

Such an elaborate construction as la langue might, no doubt, be arrived at by some Method of Intensive Distraction analogous to that with which Dr Whitehead’s name is associated, but as a guiding principle for a young science it is fantastic. Moreover, the same device of inventing verbal entities outside the range of possible investigation proved fatal to the theory of signs which followed.²

[6] As a philologist with an inordinate respect for linguistic convention, de Saussure could not bear to tamper with what he imagined to be a fixed meaning, a part of la langue. This scrupulous regard for fictitious ‘accepted’ uses of words is a frequent trait in philologists. Its roots go down very deep into human nature, as we shall see in the two chapters which follow. It is especially regrettable that a technical equipment, otherwise excellent, should have been so weak at this point, for the initial recognition of a general science of signs, ‘semiology’, of which linguistic would be a branch, and the most important branch, was a very notable attempt in the right direction. Unfortunately this theory of signs, by neglecting entirely the things for which signs stand, was from the beginning cut off from any contact with scientific methods of verification. De Saussure, however, does not appear to have pursued the matter far enough for this defect to become obvious. The same neglect also renders the more recent treatise of Professor Delacroix, Le Langage et la Pensée, ineffective as a study of the influence of language upon thought.

Philosophers and philologists alike have failed in their attempts. There remains a third group of enquirers with an interest in linguistic theory, the ethnologists, many of whom have come to their subject after a preliminary training in psychology. An adequate account of primitive peoples is impossible without an insight into the essentials of their languages, which cannot be gained through a mere transfer of current Indo-European grammatical distinctions, a procedure only too often positively misleading. In the circumstances, each field investigator might be supposed to reconstruct the grammar of a primitive tongue from his own observations of the behaviour of a speaker in a given situation. Unfortunately this is rarely done, since the [7] difficulties are very great; and perhaps owing to accidents of psychological terminology, the worker tends to neglect the concrete environment of the speaker and to consider only the ‘ideas’ which are regarded as ‘expressed’. Thus Dr Boas, the most suggestive and influential of the group of ethnologists which is dealing with the vast subject-matter provided by the American-Indian languages, formulates as the three points to be considered in the objective discussion of languages: first, the constituent phonetic elements of the language; second, the groups of ideas expressed by phonetic groups; third, the method of combining and modifying phonetic groups.

‘All speech’, says Dr Boas explicitly, ‘is intended to serve for the communication of ideas.’ Ideas, however, are only remotely accessible to outside enquirers, and we need a theory which connects words with things through the ideas, if any, which they symbolize. We require, that is to say, separate analyses of the relations of words to ideas and of ideas to things. Further, much language, especially primitive language, is not primarily concerned with ideas at all, unless under ‘ideas’ are included emotions and attitudes – a procedure which would involve terminological inconveniences. The omission of all separate treatment of the ways in which speech, besides conveying ideas, also expresses attitudes, desires and intentions,³ is another point at which the work of this active school is at present defective.

[8] In yet another respect all these specialists fail to realize the deficiencies of current linguistic theory. Pre-occupied as they are – ethnologists with recording the details of fast vanishing languages; philologists with an elaborate technique of phonetic laws and principles of derivation; philosophers with ‘philosophy’ – all have overlooked the pressing need for a better understanding of what actually occurs in discussion. The analysis of the process of communication is partly psychological, and psychology has now reached a stage at which this part may be successfully undertaken. Until this had happened the science of Symbolism necessarily remained in abeyance, but there is no longer any excuse for vague talk about Meaning, and ignorance of the ways in which words deceive us.

Throughout the Western world it is agreed that people must meet frequently, and that it is not only agreeable to talk, but that it is a matter of common courtesy to say something even when there is hardly anything to say. ‘Every civilized man’, continues the late Professor Mahaffy, to whose Principles of the Art of Conversation we owe this observation, ‘feels, or ought to feel, this duty; it is the universal accomplishment which all must practise’; those who fail are punished by the dislike or neglect of society.

There is no doubt an Art in saying something when there is [9] nothing to be said, but it is equally certain that there is an Art no less important of saying clearly what one wishes to say when there is an abundance of material; and conversation will seldom attain even the level of an intellectual pastime if adequate methods of Interpretation are not also available.

Symbolism is the study of the part played in human affairs by language and symbols of all kinds, and especially of their influence on Thought. It singles out for special enquiry the ways in which symbols help us and hinder us in reflecting on things.

Symbols direct and organize, record and communicate. In stating what they direct and organize, record and communicate we have to distinguish as always between Thoughts and Things.⁴ It is Thought (or, as we shall usually say, reference) which is directed and organized, and it is also Thought which is recorded and communicated. But just as we say that the gardener mows the lawn when we know that it is the lawn-mower which actually does the cutting, so, though we know that the direct relation of symbols is with thought, we also say that symbols record events and communicate facts.

By leaving out essential elements in the language situation we easily raise problems and difficulties which vanish when the whole transaction is considered in greater detail. Words, as every one now knows, mean nothing by themselves, although the [10] belief that they did, as we shall see in the next chapter, was once equally universal. It is only when a thinker makes use of them that they stand for anything, or, in one sense, have ‘meaning’. They are instruments. But besides this referential use which for all reflective, intellectual use o...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Selected Works 1919-1938
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Editorial Introduction
• The Meaning of Meaning
• Preface
• 1 Thoughts, Words and Things
• 2 The Power of Words
• 3 Sign-Situations
• 4 Signs in Perception
• 5 The Canons of Symbolism
• 6 The Theory of Definition
• 7 The Meaning of Beauty
• 8 The Meaning of Philosophers
• 9 The Meaning of Meaning
• 10 Symbol Situations
• Appendix A On Grammar
• Appendix B On Contexts
• Appendix C Aenesidemus' Theory of Signs
• Appendix D Some Moderns
• Appendix E On Negative Facts
• Index of Subjects
• Index of Names
• Editorial Appendix