Language: A Way of Knowing?

ToK – Y.Cornez

Language and Knowledge

Reason

EmotionSense Perception

Language and Emotion

• Language generalizes the individual experience, classifying it within the experience of the group

• A personal experience can elude expression in language

Sense perception

• Through language we can identify and name the different components of the world around us. Words describe reality.

• Does language help us recognize reality or does it construct reality? By breaking in separate sections what is in reality a continuum, how much does language shape the world we live in?

Language and Reason

• We articulate rational thinking through language and probe the logic, validity and truth of knowledge claims by formulating their meaning.

Formal logic allows us to arrive to and justify knowledge.

• Why are logical fallacies often plausible and convincing?

Can language exceed reality?

“Twas brillig, and the slithy toves  Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:All mimsy were the borogoves,  And the mome raths outgrabe.”

Lewis Carroll,“Jabberwocky”

Malooma / Kateka

“The soggy platypus veered with a yelp.”

How does language work? What is a Linguistic Sign

• Ferdinand de Saussure [1857-1913], Swiss. Founder of 20th century linguistics.

Saussure’s linguistic sign comprises a Signified (=concept) and

a Signifier (=acoustic image). The thing it designates is called the referent.

The act of Communication: What are the functions of language?

• Roman Jakobson , [1896-1982] Russian-American

linguist and literary critic, born in Moscow.

“Instead of studying a language from a historical perspective, structural linguists stressed studying the language of the people that was currently being spoken in the speech community, not the speech patterns that occurred in times past. Historical information about times past was irrelevant to the primary concerns of a structural linguist. Structural linguists also believed that the linguistic behaviors of the members of a speech community were based on orderly structures that each member of the community shared.” http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/cultural/language/structling.html

Type Oriented

towards

Function Example

REFERENTIAL Context imparting information

It's raining.

EXPRESSIVE Addresser expressing feelings or attitudes

It's freaking pissing down again!

CONATIVE or PERSUASIVE

Addressee influencing behavior Wait here till it stops raining!

PHATIC Contact establishing or maintaining social relationships

Nasty weather again, isn't it?

METALINGUAL Code referring to the nature of the interaction

This is the weather forecast.

POETIC Message foregrounding textual features

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven.

What does meaning mean?

• Semiotics: study of how meanings are made.

Concerned not only with communication but also with the construction and maintenance of reality.

Study of how signs mean.

What is Semiotics?

• Humans are meaning-makers: we make meanings through our creation and interpretation of 'signs'.

Charles Sanders Peirce [1839-1914], American.

‘We think only in signs' • Words, images, sounds, odors, flavors, acts or objects don’t

have an intrinsic meaning and become signs only when we invest them with meaning.

• 'Nothing is a sign unless it is interpreted as a sign', declares Peirce.

Signs

• We interpret things as signs largely unconsciously by relating them to familiar systems of conventions.

• It is this meaningful use of signs which is at the heart of the concerns of semiotics.

Can we think without language?

• Most of our knowledge comes to us encoded in a language.

• Does it mean that all thought necessarily take place in language?

Is language innate or learned?

• Is language “hard-wired” in our brains?

• Does culture determine the formation and shape of language use?

The Whorf hypothesis: Linguistic Determinism

• Edward Sapir [early 1900’s]- language and the thoughts are somehow interwoven- all people are equally being effected by the confines of their

language. => people are mental prisoners: they are unable to think

freely because of the restrictions of their vocabularies.

• Benjamin Whorf [1897-1941], American. - language is not simply a way of voicing ideas, but is the very thing

which shapes those ideas. One cannot think outside the confines of their language.

=> many different world views by speakers of different languages.

Linguistic determinism : what one thinks is fully determined by their language.

Language and the Knower

• Does the particular language you speak affect the way you think and see the world?

• To what degree does language create personality?

• Does a person’s personality differ in their various languages?

Language and Society

• What is the role of language in creating and reinforcing social distinctions, such as class, gender and ethnicity?

“There was once”, Margaret Atwood.