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Language is as language does.
What does it do?

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Language is as language does.

ragus
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Posted 11/12/06 - 12:57 AM: Subject: Language is as language does.	#1
It's frequently asserted that the function of language is communication. But is it? Communication is essential - language is not going to be much use if it doesn't communicate anything and if it doesn't communicate clearly. We can (and some do) spend a lot of effort in understanding the structure of language. However, this focus is, I believe, to miss the point about what languages are used for. Communication is a means not an end. I contend that the function of language is control - to get things done, to make stuff happen, to change the world - it's a soft solution that is used when hard (physical) solutions don't do the deed. What do you think?
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Alford_Korztein
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Posted 11/12/06 - 01:45 AM:	#2
Language is a method of abstracting the ideas in our head with symbols so that we can communicate with others who share the same symbology that we do. Language is just a way of presenting symbols so that the processes that are going on in our heads can by understood by others. In this regard many different animals have language. It's a method of survival. Dogs bark, cats meow, cows moo, people talk. They are all methods to get the ideas from the inside to the outside. I can't think of an instance where communication and language isn't being utilized. Maybe during sleep.

The Milk Oracle
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Posted 11/12/06 - 02:17 AM:	#3
ragus wrote: I contend that the function of language is control - to get things done, to make stuff happen, to change the world I get your drift, but I think that definition will fall back on communication eventually. After all, language doesn't control anything; it's not a mind-power-control device. When I say to you: "Wash my dishes!" it's up to you whether you wash the dishes or not -- I have no control over your action. All I have control over is my intention about what I want to communicate and what I want to get done. So if you want to maintain your definition, I think you need to adjust it to something like "the function of language is to communicate something in order to get things done". Even so, the definition excludes a lot of language. For example, what do I want to get done with an utterance such as "Pretty bad weather today."? I want to get something communicated, true, but then the "getting done" component looks rather superfluous as far as the definition of language is concerned; we could simply, and more lucidly, say that we want go communicate something. In some utterances -- orders, promises, and so on -- the "get done" component is certainly essential, but I'm not sure whether it's important enough to provide the most significant aspect of language in its entirety. Alford Korztein wrote: Language is just a way of presenting symbols so that the processes that are going on in our heads can by understood by others. In this regard many different animals have language. It's a method of survival. I'm not sure the bark of a dog or the meow of a cat are truly symbolic. Sure enough, we, humans, can interpret them as symbols (bark1 = "hello owner!", bark2 = "This guy's got drugs in his bag!", or meow1 = "Food!" and meow2 = "Pet me!" etc.), but I'm doubtful whether the way a dog "understands" its barking or a cat its meowing truly approximates our symbolic understanding of language. I'm quite convinced that, for one thing, barks and meows are not compositional. When my cat meows, she doesn't think "I use the low-pitched meow first to signify I want followed by a drawn-out high-pitched meowwwwww to signify food". Similarly, the human baby doesn't really know what it's communicating when it's crying for food. What animal communication boils down to is context-dependent instictive content without any symbolic understanding on the part of the animals involved.
We that have done and thought, That have thought and done, Must ramble, and thin out Like milk spilt on a stone. -- W. B. Yeats

amicus_curiae
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Posted 11/12/06 - 03:28 AM:	#4
I disagree with your view on babies. I believe that when the babies feel that little grumble in their tum tums they automatically think "Gaagaagoo" or "I'm hungry" and they know that it is mumsy that brings them food so they shout and scream to get their parents attention. That's communicating their feelings. Derek.
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ragus
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Posted 11/12/06 - 04:45 AM:	#5
milk oracle wrote what do I want to get done with an utterance such as "Pretty bad weather today."? You might want to tell someone there's a need for a brolly (so take one) or (to a friend) you were wrong about the weather (now where's that tenner? or (to a stranger) that you use the same cliches when confronted by strangers in England (so relax). Or any number of possibilities all of which use communication to achieve some intended end (conscious or not).
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Alford_Korztein
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Posted 11/12/06 - 05:37 AM:	#6
The Milk Oracle wrote: I'm not sure the bark of a dog or the meow of a cat are truly symbolic. Sure enough, we, humans, can interpret them as symbols (bark1 = "hello owner!", bark2 = "This guy's got drugs in his bag!", or meow1 = "Food!" and meow2 = "Pet me!" etc.), but I'm doubtful whether the way a dog "understands" its barking or a cat its meowing truly approximates our symbolic understanding of language. I'm quite convinced that, for one thing, barks and meows are not compositional. When my cat meows, she doesn't think "I use the low-pitched meow first to signify I want followed by a drawn-out high-pitched meowwwwww to signify food". You're thinking way too much like a human. When a lion roars at a possible threat it's roaring because it wants to scare the possible threat. It's not involuntary. It's trying to communicate something. A lion isn't thinking, "I want to let this animal know I mean business, but since I don't speak any langauge that he can understand, and he doesn't speak any language that I can understand, and I don't even speak a language that I understand, I'm just going to make a noise that suggests, 'get away you animal!'" It's thinking "RAWWWWWR" because "RAWWWWR" is the sound that is needed to make the animal go away. It's communicating it's sentiments. A dogs sentiments can translate to a high pitched moan, a wailing, a single bark, multiple barks, a bite, a nuzzling, a licking, all meaning different things; all forms of communication. I don't think you can say exactly what they mean to a dog or even come close by using human language as a placeholder, such as, "I wuv you," when it nuzzles and licks you. Similarly, the human baby doesn't really know what it's communicating when it's crying for food. A baby doesn't have to know it's communicating to be communicating. 90% of human interaction is body language and people are always aware of the 90% that comes across in interaction. If a baby feels hungry it's probably going to cry, at least once it can't take the hunger anymore. If a baby gets hurt it's going to cry, or if it misses mom or becomes uncomfortable in any possible way it's going to cry. It's involuntary in a sense but the functions aren't a cause of the autonomic nervous systems. What animal communication boils down to is context-dependent instictive content I agree with this. without any symbolic understanding on the part of the animals involved. I don't agree with this. What is a bark other than a symbol of what a dog wishes to express? If a dog didn't have anything to express but barked anyway, dogs would be barking involuntarily as much as they would be blinking and their heart would be beating.

The Milk Oracle
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Posted 11/12/06 - 09:31 AM:	#7
My point about babies and dogs: Alford wrote: A baby doesn't have to know it's communicating to be communicating. I'm not denying this. Of course a baby's cry communicates something, and so does a dog's bark, a cat's meow and a lion's rawr. Similarly, as ragus pointed out, we can communicate intentions "unconsciously", or people can make more out of what we say than what we intended to communicate. As Paul Watzlawik said: "You can not not communicate." My point was that the baby and the cat aren't communicating symbolically. Alford described language as "a method of abstracting the ideas in our head with symbols so that we can communicate with others who share the same symbology that we do" -- that is language used symbolically. But a baby, in my opinion, doesn't think "I have the idea of I, want and food, and I'm going to use cry#1 to signify I, cry#2 to signify want and cry#3 to signify food and then cry accordingly, knowing that Mommie is familiar with these symbols". The baby doesn't even think "crying is a symbol for give me food now!!". All the baby knows is what Derek pointed out, namely that screaming gets the parents' attention. Thanks to its instincts, the baby knows that when you want something or when something's amiss, cry. And the same goes for the dog, cat and lion examples. We as listeners can, of course, interpret the meow of a cat or the bark of a dog or the cry of a baby as symbols. After all, using symbolic language all the time ourselves, we're prone to assume that they use it symbolically, too. So in that sense the bark of a dog or the cry of a baby is, as Alford asserts, "a symbol of what a dog wishes to express". But the dog itself doesn't conceive of its own bark in that manner. It barks when its instincts and training tells it to bark, not because it wishes to express something in dog-language. Derek mentioned that babies are "communicating their feelings" -- yes, but the communication isn't an instance of a symbolic utterance. When babies are happy, they smile. When dogs are happy, they waggle the tail. Cats purr. They are indeed communicating their feelings, but not symbolically. Their behaviour is the result of instinctive reaction. That's why a baby can't smile when it's actually feeling bad. But we can say to someone "I'm feeling great!" while we're actually feeling awful, because I, am, feeling and great function as symbols. And we're not instictively driven to say "I'm super happy!" when we're happy. My point about language as use: ragus wrote: You might want to tell someone there's a need for a brolly (so take one) or (to a friend) you were wrong about the weather (now where's that tenner? or (to a stranger) that you use the same cliches when confronted by strangers in England (so relax). Or any number of possibilities all of which use communication to achieve some intended end (conscious or not). While we're at it: where does that leave the symbolic function of language? The problem with the reduction of language to use or intention is that you have a hard time explaining the symbolic function. I'm very much in favour of an intention-approach to language, but in that respect it's very difficult to come up with a good solution. Concerning the weather example: don't you think there are many linguistic utterances (my example was small-talk, but there are others, I suppose, like talking to yourself or singing in the shower, I don't know) where the search for the "end achieved" ends up in a rather far-fetched answer and, consequently, in a very vague and uninformative definition of what "achieving an end" means? Or, to return to the symbolic aspect of language, when I tell you that my intention behind the weather sentence was to inform you that the weather was bad, don't you again face the problem that the end achieved and communication are one and the same, and that there's no real need to speak of an end or getting something done to begin with?
We that have done and thought, That have thought and done, Must ramble, and thin out Like milk spilt on a stone. -- W. B. Yeats

paulend
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Posted 11/12/06 - 09:41 AM:	#8
ragus wrote: It's frequently asserted that the function of language is communication. But is it? Communication is essential - language is not going to be much use if it doesn't communicate anything and if it doesn't communicate clearly. We can (and some do) spend a lot of effort in understanding the structure of language. However, this focus is, I believe, to miss the point about what languages are used for. Communication is a means not an end. I contend that the function of language is control - to get things done, to make stuff happen, to change the world - it's a soft solution that is used when hard (physical) solutions don't do the deed. What do you think? I would say that language is probably the wrong word if we are trying to understand what is going on when one individual interacts with another in this specific way. "language" tends to refer to the specific practices of a large community of people and as you have said refers to specific rules and structures. It is therefore not particularly useful to use when trying to describe the practices of humans in a practical/functional manner. What needs to be done is to look at the behaviour of the individual when they are "using language" (and I would disagree strongly with the term "using language" and much prefer "behaving verbally"). There are distinct types of verbal behaviour of which here are two simple examples: 1. any sound or action that results in the receipt of something e.g. the sound "Coffee please" usually results in the receipt of a cup of coffee 2. any sound or action that, in the presence of a particular object/thing, receives attention/agreement/favourable outcomes from another person. When you break down verbal behaviour in this way it is much easier to see what is going on when people are behaving verbally. We can then start to look at how language originated. One idea could be that, once our human ancestors had started hunting in groups, any sound made by one of the group members in the presence of a successful hunting action of another would come to have control over that action and would be more likely to occur on a similar future occasion e.g. two of our ancestors are hunting for an animal, one is in a good position to see the animal but is out of reach of it and the other is in a much better position to attack the animal but has his view restricted. Any noise/action of the ancestor that has the good view (and this could be signs of excitement) that occurs just before the other attacks will be more likely to occur when they are hunting in the future (assuming that the attacking ancestor was successful in catching the prey). This sound/action will then develop into a sort of "signal" or instruction like the noise "NOW!" that the attacking ancestor can "use" to "know" when to attack.

ragus
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Posted 11/12/06 - 09:56 AM:	#9
milk oracle wrote to return to the symbolic aspect of language, when I tell you that my intention behind the weather sentence was to inform you that the weather was bad, don't you again face the problem that the end achieved and communication are one and the same, and that there's no real need to speak of an end or getting something done to begin with? The symbolic nature of language (x stands for y) is not under threat here. It's a means to communicate. But do you want to say that that the means of communicating the message ("the weather is bad") via language is the same as the meaning of the message conveyed ("yes I can see that it's raining . . . and your point is?")? I'm asserting language as a means to attempt to do stuff not an end : the end is in the stuff that wants doing.
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paulend
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Posted 11/12/06 - 10:00 AM:	#10
Alford_Korztein wrote: It's thinking "RAWWWWWR" because "RAWWWWR" is the sound that is needed to make the animal go away. It's communicating it's sentiments. How do you know that it is thinking this? Alford_Korztein wrote: What is a bark other than a symbol of what a dog wishes to express? "Wishes to express", do dogs have wishes?

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