What Is Suggestion?

What Is Hypnosis?

What Is Neuro-Linguistic Programming?





Lawrence Campbell
Adelaide, 1997.







































1
Preface

I was first introduced to the internet - The Internet - four years ago, when I started
my linguistics degree at Newcastle University; it actually took a few months for me
to cautiously approach the computer room with anything other than word
processing in mind, but after a little while I began to click on whatever icons I could
lay my mouse pointer on with what I have no shame in describing as a reckless
sense of abandon.

I spent nights in that computer room, often only emerging the next day to the
sounds of bird chorus in the quadrangle; words such as 'vi', 'jpeg', 'dos', 'pkunzip'
and 'ftp' entered my conversations, much to the bewilderment of my flatmates.
Several parties expressed concern that I may have been taking drugs; if this was
true, how much did I pay, and what could I get hold of?
But no, I wasn't on drugs. I was caught in another web of intrigue - The Web.
At that time, I had been interested in hypnosis for approximately four years. In that
four years I had read everything I could find in the local bookshops and libraries -
an amount of books which could probably be counted on the hands of at least a
couple of people, perhaps a farmer and his wife from Shropshire. I had read
numerous old and out-of-date 'How To Hypnotise' books; I had read a few modern
'How Hypnotherapy Can Help You' books; I had read the university's four volumes
of The Collected Papers Of Milton H. Erickson On Hypnosis; and I had read a few of
the Bandler & Grinder/Grinder & Bandler books on Neuro-Linguistic Programming.
I was, of course, firmly hooked by then.
So there I was with my interest in hypnosis in one hand and my computer in the
other (figuratively speaking, of course); it was time to search the net for the
multitude of sites out there dealing with hypnosis and related issues. Search,
locate, bookmark! SEARCH, LOCATE, BOOKMARK! I was like an insane cyberdalek
on speed.
But, alas, I didn't find very much, so I became a slightly disgruntled cyberdalek. As
usual with hypnosis, too much of the little I did find was either ethically dubious (Hi
Ross!), tasteless, badly constructed or 'unscientific' (whatever that means).
So, of course, I decided to try to add to the amount of decent stuff out there (Hi
Weaver, Stark, etc!) by authoring my own pages on the subject. I hope I'm doing
ok; chances are that whenever you're reading this, I'm still less than halfway
through writing it - whether this is because I'll be working very slowly or because it
will be of infinite length I'm unsure.
I hope somebody out there finds it useful, or failing that at least ethically okay,
remotely tasteful, well constructed and vaguely scientific! If you have any
comments or suggestions/spot any mistakes/fancy a chat, email me at
venus@camtech.net.au and let me know. Happy reading!
Lawrence Campbell
Adelaide, 1997.














2
Introduction

What Is Suggestion?

What Is Hypnosis?

What Is Neuro-Linguistic Programming?

Another field of
A large part of the criticism of psychological/philosophical texts seems to concern
itself with locating two instances in the text where the author has used a particular
word to mean different things, however slight, then dragging him over hot coals for
it ('Here he's used 'unconscious' to refer to a thing, and here he's used it to refer to
a process! The fool doesn't know what he's talking about!'). This I discovered when
I was being taught about Chomsky in university, and it looked very much to me like
blaming the author for the pitfalls of the language he or she was born to acquire,
and nothing at all like trying to understand what he or she was trying to
communicate. A good example of this is the strikingly vague word 'hypnosis', which
has - whether rightly or wrongly - come to mean nothing much more than 'a special
state of concentrated attention'. In the books of Richard Bandler and John Grinder,
co-developers of Neuro-Linguistic Programming, the authors are very fond of
arguing between themselves whether all communication is hypnosis or whether
there is no such thing as hypnosis at all. Of course, it depends on how you look at
it; ie, how you want to define it.
It seems to me that there are two ways to overcome the problem of 'vague'
terminology in writing - one is to enclose every word, or perhaps every morpheme,
in quotation marks (in effect saying 'whatever this word means'); and the other is
to include in your introduction a list of the likely-to-be-queried words and then
explain what you intend to mean by them.
I opt for the latter, and present:
A Short Dictionary Of Misunderstood Words

What Is Suggestion?

I had to think very carefully about what to call this thing I will refer to henceforth
as a book. The books I own on the subject(s) I will be addressing have words like
hypnosis, neurolinguistic programming, therapy, pragmatics and communication in
their titles; why, then, did I choose the word suggestion to describe my subject
matter?
The word 'suggestion' normally refers to a proposal, to an offering of advice; and
this everyday definition and use of the the word 'suggestion' may turn out to be a
very helpful one. I can suggest you take your umbrella if you are going out in the
rain, and in doing so I am putting an idea into your head, suggesting it. In a sense,
I am 'manipulating' (see below) you; if you pick up your umbrella and say, 'That's a
good idea', then I have changed your behaviour in accordance with my suggestion.
Also, in a sense, I am simply adding to your choices of responding to the situation.
In hypnosis, the word 'suggestion' has lost this meaning, and now seems to mean a
sort of command given while the person is 'in' a 'trance';





What Is Hypnosis?

3
The short answer is, nobody's quite sure. However, if somebody were to pretend to
know, then their answer would probably go something like this:
Hypnosis is
You May Be Surprised To Learn That...
...Hypnosis Is Not Sleep
The word 'hypnosis' comes from the name of the Greek god of sleep, Hypnos.
Originally it was thought that since hypnosis resembled sleep in some ways, the
two must be related. noticed that this was not in fact the case, and instead tried to
substitute the word 'Monoideism' (signifying concentrated attention), but it was too
late by then.
...You Have Already Experienced Being In Hypnosis
...You Cannot Become 'Stuck' In Hypnosis
...Everybody Has The Ability To Be Hypnotised
Throughout the rather short history of the scientific study of hypnosis, opinion on
what percentage of the population could be hypnotised has varied rather wildly.


Ambiguity

'He would throw a styrofoam rock at a patient and exclaim,
"Don't take anything for granite!"'
- C. Lankton on Milton H. Erickson
Syntactic Ambiguity
Phonological Ambiguity
Semantic Ambiguity
'solve many of your present problems'
Punctuation Ambiguity



Analogue Marking

The notion of analogue marking is taken from the field of Neuro-Linguistic
Programming, about which it seems appropriate to say a word or two here. NLP
(not to be confused with natural language processing, which uses the same
acronym) was created in the seventies by Richard Bandler and John Grinder.
Bandler and Grinder took a close look at how certain successful therapists (Fritz
Perls, Virginia Satir, and of course Milton H. Erickson to name a few) achieved what
they did. After studying each person's approach, and amalgamating the results,
NLP was born.
Essentially, analogue marking is a way of setting an embedded word or phrase
apart from the rest of your utterance using some analogue non-verbal behaviour.
This could consist of a change in tone or volume of voice, a gesture, a pause before
the directive, etc; indeed any form of behaviour that is perceptible to the other
person. On the written page, a line break may be used in the appropriate place to,
or a picture or photograph inserted immediately before the directive. It is not
necessary for this noticing to be accomplished on a conscious level; indeed, it is
generally held that it is more effective if it does not intrude into consciousness, as
such an intrusion usually provokes resistance.
Analogue marking is a meta-pattern, in that it is used in conjunction with the other
verbal patterns mentioned. It is a way of coding verbal behaviour. For a bit more
on this, I'd highly recommend 'Steps to an Ecology of Mind' by Gregory Bateson.

Metaphor

4
Traditional discussions of metaphor

Negation

Don't think of an elephant.
There, thought of an elephant, didn't you?!
Negation only exists in language; it does not exist in experience.

Presupposition

There are many different types of presupposition, many different ways of
presupposing. Below are some of the major types/ways.
1. Referring Expressions.
Referring expressions occur more frequently than other types of presupposition, in
fact in every sentence there is, by virtue of the fact that every sentence must have
a subject. Let's take the sentence
"God loves you"
. Now, this sentence gives rise to what is called an 'existential presupposition' in
that it presupposes that there is a god doing the loving. He cannot do the loving if
he does not exist in the first place; therefore his existence is presupposed. The
great debates that have centred around the famous
"The King of France is bald"
hinge on the fact that the existence of a King of France is presupposed due to its
being in subject position. The only sentences which are not considered to have
existential presuppositions are sentences such as
"God exists"
- this is because a sentence cannot assert and presuppose the same thing
simultaneously.
Referring expressions can be quite complex, such as:
"The confidence with which you have approached this problem is amazing"
, where it is presupposed that "the confidence with which you have approached this
problem" exists. To become adept in spotting and creating referring expressions in
language, one must fully understand what a grammatical subject is, and what a
grammatical object is. In the above example, the subject is "the confidence with
which you have approached this problem", just as the subject is merely "God" in
the first example. There are simple tests to tell what constitutes the subject, for
instance asking questions such as "Who loves you?" to which the answer is "God",
and so "God" is the subject. With "What is amazing?" we get the answer, "the
confidence with which you have approached this problem", again the subject.
For a little exercise, how many referring expressions are there in the sentence
"Why does God tolerate man's wickedness?"?
Answer: A) God B) Man C) Man's Wickedness
Referring expressions, then, are noun phrases.
Every noun phrase presupposes the existence of something.
Nominalizations, such as "toleration", for example, presuppose not only that there
is something being tolerated, but also that there is a being carrying out the
toleration. And of course, if we are being pedantic, that the concept of "toleration"
exists...
So we can further and further embed these things, as in:
"Does God's toleration of man's wickedness justify our belief in him?",
which presupposes through its referring expressions alone that all of the following
exist:
God Man Wickedness Man's wickedness Toleration God's toleration God's toleration
of man's wickedness Our belief in God
ALL of these are ASSUMED to be true in the asking of this question, and whether
one answers yes or no, they remain unchallenged; it requires metacomment to
5
challenge any of them. Metacomment is of a differing logical type than the
comment itself; it is a communication concerning the communication, and is hence
more "difficult" to introduce, especially for the child or hypnotised subject. 2.
Factives.
3. Aspectual Verbs.
Aspectual verbs are verbs such as "Stop", "Start", "Give Up", "Continue",
"Renounce", "Finish", and other similar verbs which involve the starting or stopping
of an action. The famous example "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?"
affords us a good view of the aspectual verb in action - we can see that if the poor
interviewee answers "Yes" then he seemingly admits to having beaten his wife at
some point, and if he answers "No", then he admits that he is still beating her!
'Keep Britain Tidy', similarly, presupposes that Britain is already tidy.
4. Cleft and Pseudo-cleft Clauses.
5. Certain Lexical Items.
"Too" -
"Even" -
"Just" -
"Until" -
6. Adverbial Clauses.
7. Others.

Quotes

Sven Garley, the famous Dutch writer and hypnotist extraordinaire, writes:
"The use of reported speech in suggestion allows you to deliver a comment without
responsibility, since the comment is of a different logical type than direct speech.
For instance, you can talk about another hypnotist's induction, and tell of how he
always used to say, straight out, 'You're going to sleep!' and of how that person
usually did within a few minutes. This technique can of course be used to good
effect with analogue marking.
Alternatively, one can perhaps write of a time you hypnotised a client by giving him
an induction to read, which said basically 'As you begin to read this, feeling your
eyes concentrating on these words to the exclusion of all else, you may begin to
notice just how easy it is, just how pleasant it is, to let your mind slowly, slowly
relax, relax so that actually you become aware that you'd rather just drift off into
your own little world to think about what you're learning, and to think about what
you're really understanding, because that's so much easier and more pleasant than
continuing to read...'
And of course there's no reason why you should stop there..."
This technique is also sometimes referred to as stacking realities.

Behaviour Patterns

Bind
double bind theory --- illusion of alternatives
Implied Directive
Polarity Response
Reframing
Rapport
Symptom Prescription


The Bind

6
"A crack on the head is what you get for not asking, and a crack on the head is
what you get for asking..."
- The Smiths
In Towards A Theory Of Schizophrenia, a paper printed in Behavioral Science in
1956, the authors Gregory Bateson (son of the famous geneticist William Bateson),
Don Jackson, Jay Haley and John Weakland put forward a theory of schizophrenia
which has come to be known as the Double Bind Theory. The hypothesis put
forward, which has its roots in Bertrand Russell's Theory Of Logical Types (amongst
other things), suggests that the aetiology of schizophrenia lies not in genes or
chemical imbalances, but in certain pathogenic patterns of communication.
Bateson et al go on to list the requirements for a double bind situation:
Two or more persons.
Repeated experience.
A primary negative injunction.
A secondary injunction conflicting with the first at a more abstract level, and like
the first enforced by punishments or signals which threaten survival.
A tertiary negative injunction prohibiting the victim from escaping the field.
One of the best examples of this is that where the irritated parent says to the child,
'Go to bed, you're very tired and I want you to get your sleep'. This is, on the
verbal level, a statement of caring; 'I want you to get your sleep, I care about you'.
However, the child will be quite astute enough to pick up the non-verbal signals to
the contrary - 'I'm irritated, I don't want you near me'. Thus the child is put in a
most undesirable situation, having the following two choices:
Accept not only that the parent does not care about him, but is prepared to lie
about it in such a manner, or
Deny the non-verbal messages which convey this essentially life-threatening
information.
So here we have two conflicting messages; one on a verbal level, one on a more
abstract level. The victim cannot escape the field - a child cannot 'escape' its
parents.
So, a person caught in this type of situation again and again - systematically
distorting vital metacommunicative messages - is, so the authors say, likely to
develop symptoms of schizophrenia.

In essence, the double bind provides an illusory freedom of choice between two
possible alternatives, neither of which is really consciously desired but one of which
is necessary in some way.
A simple example is afforded by a child's reluctance to go to bed; instructed that
they must go to bed at 8.00pm, they have the feeling of being coerced, and hence
will resist. If the same children are asked 'Do you want to go to bed at quarter to
eight or eight o'clock?', the vast majority respond by selecting of their own 'free
will' the latter. It will be noticed that the primary advantage of a bind such as this is
that it effectively channels and discharges resistance; whereas previously the child
was resistant to the idea of going to bed, now he is resisting the idea of going to
bed at eight o'clock.
The following sections discuss various types of bind in greater detail.
1. Illusion of Alternatives.
A fundamental characteristic of all binds is that there is free choice on a primary or
object level that is recognized by the subject, but that behaviour is structured on a
secondary or metalevel so that it goes unrecognized. This metalevel is structured
by the hypnotherapist so that all responses on the lower primary level are
beneficial, whichever are chosen, and so that there is some type of motivation for
the subject to keep within the boundaries of the primary level and not question the
metalevel. If a man is asked, "Would you like a punch in the face or a kick in the
knee?", he will respond, "Neither", jumping up a level because there is no reason at
all why he should accept either of the primary level choices. But a child must go to
bed at some point, and similarly for other binds to be effective there must be some
7
kind of acceptable limitation on the metalevel, although this limitation can be for
different reasons.
When Milton H. Erickson was a little boy, his father would offer him the choice of
feeding either the hogs or the chickens first; of course, Milton always opted for the
easiest of the two, and no doubt felt good that he was able to postpone the more
difficult task until later. We can represent this kind of illusion of alternatives by the
following diagram:

2. The Conscious/Unconscious Double Bind.
E.G. "You don't even have to listen to me, because your unconscious is here and
can hear what it needs to in order to respond in just the right way".
3. The Time Double Bind.
The example given at the top of this page is a good example of a double bind
involving time. Another example: "Do you want to get over this habit this week or
next week? That may seem too soon - perhaps you'd like a longer period of three
or four weeks." .
4. The Reverse Set Double Bind.
5. The Non Sequitur Double Bind.
E.G. "Do you want to take a bath before going to bed, or would you rather put your
pyjamas on in the bathroom?". The metalevel here makes no sense whatsoever,
but tends to be accepted in some cases because the subject just assumes it makes
sense and gives up trying to process it fully.
6. The Schizogenic Double Bind.

The Implied Directive

A label proposed by Erickson et al in 1976, the Implied Directive refers to a fairly
common type of indirect suggestion which usually has three parts:
a time-binding introduction
an implied/assumed suggestion
a behavioral response to signal completion of the suggestion
An example of an implied directive used by Ernest Rossi to terminate trance is as
follows:
"As soon as your unconscious knows (a time-binding introduction) it can return
again to this state comfortably and easily to do constructive work the next time we
are together (an implied/assumed suggestion), you will find yourself awakening
feeling refreshed and alert (a behavioral response to signal completion of the
suggestion)."
Contingency in suggestion also presents itself in another form very much related to
the implied directive; consider
'People of above average intelligence tend to respond very well to suggestions'.
A variation on 'Every schoolboy knows'.
This is a matter of definition; you are giving the subject the opportunity to define
himself as intelligent by responding to the subsequent suggestions. Clearly there
8
are infinite variations on this theme, depending upon your knowledge of how
subject would like to see himself; a particularly moral individual might be told
'People with high morals tend to enter trance very easily'.

Miscellany

The Placebo Paradox
Language Change
Metalinguistic Negation
Milton H. Erickson: The Handshake Induction
The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
Principles of Neuro-Linguistic Programming
One of the best things Neuro-Linguistic Programming has bequeathed to the world
is its underlying experimentalist philosophy; this philosophy has been coded into
several maxims which in NLP circles are referred to as the 'presuppositions' of NLP,
but since 'presupposition' is a linguistic term, I shall use the word 'principle' for the
sake of clarity. These principles, then, are:
The ability to change the process by which we experience reality is often more
valuable than changing the content of our experience of reality.
The meaning of the communication is the response you get.
All distinctions human beings are able to make concerning our environment and our
behaviour can be usefully represented through the visual, auditory, kinaesthetic,
olfactory, and gustatory senses.
The resources an individual needs in order to effect a change are already within
them.
The map is not the territory.
The positive worth of the individual is held constant, while the value and
appropriateness of internal and/or external behaviour is questioned.
There is a positive intention motivating every behaviour, and a context in which
every behaviour has value.
Feedback vs. Failure - All results and behaviours are achievements, whether they
are desired outcomes for a given task/context or not.
Is Hypnosis Compliance?
Is Hypnosis Manipulation?
On reading Erickson & Rossi's Experiencing Hypnosis, one cannot help but be struck
by the editor's wish to rephrase many of the terms that would have been quite
acceptable to Erickson: 'manipulate' has been replaced by 'utilize'; 'direct' has also
been replaced by 'utilize'; even 'technique' is cast aside in favour of the infinitely
more pc 'approach'! The reason for this?
I am not writing about therapy, either, though I may quote examples of therapeutic
interventions. Suggestion is a tool, and it can be used for whatever you like. A knife
can be used to stab a man, or to cut the rope that binds his hands - exactly which
is the business of the man wielding the knife, not the knife itself. This is an
important distinction to make. So, this is a book about how to wield a knife,
regardless of what or why you want to cut.
I quote Jeffrey K. Zeig, with whom I am in agreement:
'"Manipulation" has a negative connotation. However, as communication analysts
such as Watzlawick point out, it is impossible not to manipulate. Interpersonal
exchange is predicated on manipulation. Manipulation is unavoidable; the issue is
how to manipulate constructively and therapeutically.'
I think that the above comment hits the nail on the head (but remember - just
because a hammer is good for knocking nails in doesn't mean it's the tool for every
job! :) ).
All Hypnosis is Self-Hypnosis
Pick up any popular book on hypnosis written between the twenties and the present
day, and it is likely you will find this legend confidently emblazoned somewhere
within the first few pages. The All hypnosis is self hypnosis aphorism's success has
9
its roots in two things: firstly, it has the desirable consequence of allaying the
patient's/subject's/client's fears about surrender of will (Does the end justify the
means?), and secondly it's a very easy way to conceive of things. In truth, though,
it's not exactly right; even Milton H. Erickson, pioneer of the now popular patient's-
unconscious-as-healing-agent ideology, used the words 'manipulate' and 'seduce' to
refer to the hypnotic process.
It is, alas, too often done in science to look at isolated parts of a system rather
than the whole system - as was done with schizophrenia before the double bind
theory came along. In linguistics there is a current trend to follow Noam Chomsky
and look at language as a mental state rather than a form of behaviour, which
always seemed to me like looking at a game of tennis as if it were a mental state:
possible, perhaps, but not exactly the best way of looking at things - what about
the player's body, the court, the ball? Surely these things are all parts of a system,
and surely this system itself should be the object of study, rather than isolated ball
movements or player movements?
Saying that all hypnosis is self hypnosis is akin to saying all massage is self-
massage, because it's your skin that's doing the moving around.
There is another reason why the hypnotist is necessary: what is unconscious is
unconscious for a reason, and will do its best to stop itself from becoming
conscious. What this means is, In this respect also, then, hypnosis is a bit like a
massage; there are bits you just can't reach yourself.
Freudian Ego-Defence Mechanisms

Language Change

Poetry has personification, psychoanalysis has projection, and those of neither an
artistic nor therapeutic bent can refer to 'the pathetic fallacy' - defined as 'the
attribution of human feelings and responses to inanimate things'. Given the
penchant of the human mind for the attribution of its own thoughts, feelings and
motives to others - whether human or not - we should not be surprised to learn
that the view of a language as a living, autonomous entity is nothing new.
References to 'living' and 'dead' languages are commonplace, and languages are
said to 'evolve' as if they were alive.
In keeping with this metaphorical view of things, accounts of language change have
traditionally been system-based; that is, social factors and contexts have largely
been disregarded in favour of descriptive accounts of change focusing on language-
internal histories. The speaker's role in language change has often been ignored, or
relegated to that of a 'host', enjoying a mutually profitable symbiotic relationship
with the language.
Are speakers of any particular language, then, to be reduced to the status of
'carriers' in any explanations of language evolution? Is this view justified, even as a
heuristic? Some think that the 'living language' is more than a mere faon de
parler. Richard Dawkins, in his book 'The Selfish Gene', put forward a theory of
replicating entities which he termed 'memes'. An enthusiastic proponent of
Darwinism, Dawkins considers natural selection 'too big a theory to be confined to
the narrow context of the gene', and applies the principle to units of cultural
transmission such as 'tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions and ways of
making pots or building arches' amongst other things. He goes on to say, 'Just as
genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via
sperm or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from
brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation. If a
scientist hears or reads about a good idea, he passes it onto his colleagues and
students. He mentions it in his articles and his lectures. If the idea catches on, it
can be said to propagate itself, spreading from brain to brain'. Dawkins regards a
hen as an egg's way of making another egg, a view which is certainly thought-
provoking. The philosopher Daniel Dennett makes a crucial move, taking this
dictum beyond the genetic level, and even beyond the memetic: 'A scholar is a
10
library's way of making another library'. We certainly move into a more
questionable area here, although Dennett is in good company; Karl Popper, in his
book 'Objective Knowledge', is similarly generous to libraries, which belong to his
'third world' . In Popper's opinion, books, in that they are capable of containing
logical propositions and contradictions, and theories with 'objective logical content',
are more than just paper and ink. Books, he proposed, possess objective
knowledge - whether they are understood, or even read, is incidental for Popper.
Knowledge without a knower is a reality, the reader - and indeed the writer -
otiose. Popper clearly owes a lot to the theories of Hegel and Plato on such matters,
although the accepted view of a 'Platonic Object' differs in that Platonic Objects -
such as natural numbers and geometric shapes - exist entirely independently of
humans, while inhabitants of the third world are at least to some extent contingent
upon the existence of humans; in much the same way as Dawkin's memes, they
are 'man-made'.
The most recent supporter of the ding-an-sich theory as far as language is
concerned is Roger Lass. In his 'What are language histories histories of?', he
argues that the objects of linguistics are abstract and extra-mental. His neo-
structuralism sees cognitivism such as that of Chomsky as an invalid foundation for
linguistic study, and advocates a return to the former concerns with E-languages. It
is Lass' opinion that 'at the structural level there is no connexion between language
and society'. Mentalism is, for Lass, irrelevant; he favours a kind of pluralist
interactionism wherein the world of language is a sort of autonomous world-three
entity and speakers have varying levels of involvement with it. He sees the
metaphor of the living language as pointing to an underlying reality...otherwise,
how would the metaphor have come about?
There are, however, those who disagree with this. Grace: 'Historical linguistics is
based on a metaphor in which individual languages are thought of as [analogous
to] physical entities, and the inaccuracies of this metaphor are beginning to exact a
price'. This I agree with. Milroy has the opinion that 'the ideology of standardisation
causes people to believe that [languages] are indeed discrete physical entities', and
this too I would agree with. We are a victim of our heuristic. The language-in-itself
is , I think, a very good example of how a heuristic can get out of hand...a few
heuristics in the right places, and seemingly plausible new theories are born which
are based on the heuristics themselves rather than reality. This is undoubtedly a
way of going about things which should be avoided. It is commonplace to talk of 'a'
language, which is spoken by 'a' society; we would do well to bear in mind that
within 'one' language, great differences between individual speakers are apparent
at both lexical and phonological levels. Words such as 'saltatoria' and 'netty' which
feature in my lexicon do not feature in that of my flatmate who hails from the other
end of the country and has no interest in entomology whatsoever. Similarly,
someone from one end of the country may not understand someone with a broad
accent from the other end. It becomes clear that Chomsky's distributive,
intrapsychic language is a reality, and social language, shared language, a heuristic
except - perhaps - so far as grammar is concerned. 'Language' change is initiated
at the level of the individual, and spreads from individual to individual (a group of
individuals we commonly call a society, but to do so is to disguise the fact that they
are individuals. Japan is the enemy; you are Japanese, ergo you are the enemy).
To think of it any other way is wrong.
Language is made up of lots of small personal interactions, and any process of
communication involves a sender and a reciever. I am writing this essay using
symbols, and when I speak I do likewise. This process is best described as
'linguistic behaviour', and is consistent of various neurological and muscular
activities within me. Popper's notion that this essay contains objective knowledge,
and Dennett's library dictum, are both fallacious. I can only assume that Popper is
confusing that map with the territory; without interpretation, any writing remains
just ink on paper. The propositions which may be true or false that Popper talks of
books as including are certainly not in the ink - if anywhere, they are in the mind of
11
the reader (Strictly speaking, this is not true. Propositions do not exist.), and are
'made of' neural networks. Dennett, of course, as Dawkins has since pointed out,
makes the mistake in having as self-replicating entities libraries, which of course
are unlike memes in that memes are self-replicating entities which are directly
contingent upon other self-replicating entities (genes). Without genes, there are no
memes. This is the crucial respect in which Dawkin's theory is more viable than
Dennett's or Popper's.
Language is an activity of mind, or one may say perhaps less accurately a state of
mind. I believe that Mentalism is as harmless a viewpoint as we are going to get.
When we talk of language change, we are talking of a change in the linguistic
behaviour of - and hence the neurology of - many individuals. The lacuna between
speaker innovation and language change, as distinguished by Milroy, does not seem
so great when one thinks of things this way.
To summarise, then: I do not believe that I am a 'carrier' of my language any more
than I believe I am a 'carrier' of the chess moves I know. Books contain no more
objective knowledge than do accounts of chess games written in the appropriate
notation. The world would do well to understand the errors in thought that
language surreptitiously brings about; Wittgenstein was right. If we are to speak of
languages changing, then we must realise that it is the speakers that change them.
This is not to imply that the innovation of any particular speaker is conscious,
although it might be. Language is a form of behaviour; language change is a
change in linguistic behaviour. As Joan Beal, talking of the great vowel shift, put it:
'It's not the vowels doing it themselves, of course; it's the speakers that are doing
it'.

Bibliography
Carr, P.1990. 'Linguistic Realities'. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dawkins, R.1976. 'The Selfish Gene'. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dennett, D.1991. 'Consciousness Explained'. Allen Laine: The Penguin Press.
Grace, G.1990. 'The "Aberrant"; Melanesian Languages'. in Baldi,P. (ed)
'Linguistic Change And Reconstruction Methodology'. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter.
Katz, J.J.1981. 'Language And Other Abstract Objects'. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Lass, R.1980. 'On Explaining Language Change'. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
'What Are Language Histories Histories Of?'. in Lieb,H.1992 (ed.) 'Prospects For A
New Structuralism'. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing.
Milroy,J.1992. 'Linguistic Variation And Change'. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Popper,K.1972. 'Objective Knowledge'. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Metalinguistic

Negation

I will base this essay around the examination of thirteen utterances, which are as
follows:
(1) John doesn't have three children, he has four.
(2) Irrational numbers aren't possible, they're necessary.
(3) I'm not happy, I'm ecstatic!
(4) We don't like cricket, we love it.
(5) Max is not not very tall, he's a dwarf.
(6) I didn't read the paper and get up, I got up and read the paper.
(7) The bottle isn't half-empty, it's half-full.
(8) Our dog doesn't crap, it defecates.
(9) It's not stewed rabbit, it's fricassee de lapin.
(10) I'm not his daughter, he's my father.
(11) We don't eat /temaydoze/, we eat /tomahtoes/.
(12) I didn't trap two mongeese, I trapped two mongooses.
(13) The film isn't e`soteric , it's eso`teric.
12
All of the above utterances contain instances of what is nowadays commonly called
metalinguistic (or sometimes 'paradoxical') negation.
Laurence R. Horn, of Yale University, has defined this type of negation as 'a
metalinguistic device for registering objection to a previous utterance (not
proposition) on any grounds whatever'. Metalinguistic negation does not operate
upon the semantic content of the sentence, but upon the manner in which the
sentence was expressed, the utterance.
And we can verify that this negation can indeed operate on any aspect of the
utterance. In example (12), for instance, we see that what is being negated is not
the proposition that the speaker trapped two small flesh-eating civet-like mammals
of the family Viverridae; this is not the matter in question. What the response 'I
didn't trap two mongeese, I trapped two mongooses.' is objecting to is the form of
the plural. This objection, somewhat curiously, takes the form of a negation of the
original proposition.
The above example objects to the utterance on grounds of the morphology.
Objections may also be made on phonological grounds, as in (11), where the
speaker clearly wishes to draw attention to the actual pronunciation of the word
'tomatoes'; since the two pronunciations have the same semantic referent, it
cannot possibly be the semantic content that is being negated.
So we see that objections may be made on grounds of various aspects of
morphology or phonology. Also, as we see in example (18), suprasegmental
aspects of the utterance may be called into question; the speaker uttering (13)
utters the same word twice, so again, since the two utterances have exactly the
same referent, we would be forced to view this as a straightforward contradiction
were it not for the suprasegmental difference. So here, although the negation
would seem to logically negate the proposition that the film is esoteric, it actually
acts upon the stress of the initial speaker's utterance, which is of a differing logical
type.
The nature of the scalar relationship between word pairs such as "like " and "love",
and "happy " and "ecstatic", enables utterances such as (3) and (4) to be included
in any respectable list of metalinguistic negations. Two different interpretations of
this relationship have been forwarded by Lehrer and Lehrer: the 'hyponymy'
interpretation, and the 'incompatible' interpretation. Under the hyponymy
interpretation," good" and "excellent " would be viewed as mutually compatible;
something would be able to be "good" and "excellent" simultaneously, and the
relationship between the two seen as a hyponymous one. Under the incompatible
interpretation, as might be expected, the two adjectives would be viewed as
mutually incompatible; something would either have to be described as one or the
other, but not both. Evidence has been put forward which supports both of these
interpretations:
(3a) We're happy - we're even ecstatic!
(3b) We're not happy - we're ecstatic!
...both of which are perfectly acceptable utterances.
Of course utterance (5) fits into this bracket. 'Max is not not very tall, he's a dwarf'.
Instinctively we want to put quotation marks around 'not very tall' - 'Max is not "not
very tall" - he's a dwarf'; we do this to show that the quoted item is "mentioned"
rather than "used". The instinct to do this also derives from the recognition that two
'not's occurring in sequence in a sentence would not occur in patterns other than
this; any 'not not' in a sentence of English would be otiose unless it was used for
just the purpose of metalinguistic negation. 'Short' would be used instead of 'not
not tall'. And we can see that if we cancel out these negatives, as would be done
automatically were the negation not metalinguistic, then we would end up with:
(5a) Max is not not very tall - he's a dwarf.
(5b) Max is very tall - he's a dwarf.
What we have done is to split the quoted (mentioned, negated) material, 'not very
tall'. The result is a straightforward semantic contradiction, not making any sense
13
at all. In fact, we find that any alteration of the quoted material results in similar
nonsense. Consider:
(2a) Irrational numbers are not possible, they're necessary.
(2b) Irrational numbers are impossible, they're necessary.
Lexical incorporation of the negation renders (2b) contradictory. In any ordinary
sense, where only one level is in use, 'not possible' and 'impossible' are
synonymous. But here we find that while (2) is perfectly acceptable, (2b) is again a
straightforward contradiction from a semantic viewpoint. This is because there is a
shift of logical type, between the used and the mentioned, after the word 'not' in
(2). This difference between 'use' and 'mention' is best shown as follows:
Mark is my favourite brother
'Mark' is my favourite name
We can see that in the first case the proper noun "Mark " has a referent, namely
the speaker's brother. In the second, the name is not being used to refer to any
individual, the thing in question is the word itself. In the first instance the word is
being used, in the second it is being mentioned. The shift of level from the used to
the mentioned can of course be (and usually would be, in written language)
indicated in most instances with the use of quotation marks, as with the 'Mark'
example above. Thus:
I'm not 'happy', I'm ecstatic!
Our dog doesn't 'crap', it defecates.
I didn't trap two 'mongeese', I trapped two mongooses.
In these cases we can see that what is being objected to is the actual form of the
utterance; the speaker wishes the term he objects to to be replaced with a more or
less synonymous word with differing connotations. This paraphrasing can be have a
different phonology, morphology, or even be in a different language altogether
((14)). In all these cases it is possible to represent the change of level with the use
of quotation marks. There are instances, though, in which quotation marks will not
indicate the shift of level, because the objection is not towards a particular word or
phrase, but a more subtle aspect of the utterance. Thus in (10), we see an example
of where what is being negated is not any aspect of the actual words used, but
rather the focus of the original statement. The same is the case with example (7);
"half-full" and "half-empty" are not synonymous in the way that "crap" and
"defecate" are. To write
I'm not his 'daughter', he's my father
,with quotation marks, would not clarify the issue as it would with the cases
mentioned above. Of course this also goes for example (1), which is quite a special
case. In (1), what is being negated is the conversational implicature of an utterance
somehow proposing that John has "only" three children.
Of course we must ask at this point whether (1) is actually contradictory; it could
be claimed that 'three' is ambiguous, or that it means 'at least three', or
alternatively 'three and no more than three'. It has also been claimed that three
actually means simply 'three', no more and no less; although this viewpoint is not
at the moment terribly fashionable. Horn explains this in terms of H. P. Grice's
conversational maxim of quantity, which states that as much information must be
given as is relevant. Thus the speaker's saying that John has three children when
he has four violates this maxim; something true has been said but the implication -
that he has no more than three - was misleading. So, in the utterance
John doesn't have three children, he has four
, the first proposition semantically is true, but it conversationally implicates that
John has three children and no more, which is untrue; hence the metalinguistic
negation in this case is acting upon a conversational implicature. We see that since
what is being negated is not an actual word or phrase, the use of quotation marks
does little to help us make sense of this utterance:
John doesn't have 'three' children, he has four.
Horn puts the relationship between the scalar operators "three" and "four" in the
same category as the relationship between "like" and "love", "possible" and
14
"necessary", and "happy" and "ecstatic". A difference must exist, though; this we
can see through the application of the quotation mark test. 'I'm not "happy", I'm
ecstatic!' is fine, whereas 'I don't have "three" children, I have four' is not. Is it the
case, then, that with 'We don't like cricket, we love it', what is being negated is the
conversational implicature that we just "like" cricket and no more? This would seem
to be the case.
So although the semantics of the utterance are plainly contradictory, the utterance
makes sense on a pragmatic level. It has been argued that the word itself may be
ambiguous, such as has with example (6); does the word 'and' have different
meanings in the following cases? :
(11) I didn't read the paper and get up, I got up and read the paper.
(11b) I bought a pen and I bought a pencil.
In other words, is there an 'and' which means something like 'and then', as in (6),
and an 'and' which just plainly conjoins things without 'hinting at' a temporal
relationship? It would seem a better analysis to say that the word has the same
meaning in both cases, but there is a differing implication.
As for
(a) Certainly I finished some of my sausages, I finished them all!
(b) I certainly didn't finish some of my sausages, I finished them all!
,we can immediately see that they are semantically contradictory, like others that
have been mentioned. The "some"/"all " relationship" is a scalar one, like
"possible"/"necessary" and "like"/"love"; and in denying that I finished some of the
sausages I am not denying the semantics of it, but the conversational implicature
that I finished some and not all.
Bibliography
Chapman, S. (1993) Metalinguistic Negation, Sentences And Utterances.
Newcastle And Durham Working Papers In Linguistics: 74-94.
Burton-Roberts, N. (1989) On Horn's Dilemma: Presupposition And Negation.
Journal Of Linguistics 25: 95-125.
Burton-Roberts, N. (1990) Trivalence, Gapped Bivalence And Ambiguity Of
Negation: A Reply To Seuren. Journal Of Linguistics 26: 455-470.
Grice, P. (1989) Studies In The Way Of Words. Harvard: Harvard University Press.
Horn, L. (1985) Metalinguistic Negation And Pragmatic Ambiguity. Language 61:
121-174.
Horn, L. (1989) A Natural History Of Negation. Chicago: The University Of Chicago
Press.
Seuren, P. (1990) Burton-Roberts On Presupposition And Negation. Journal Of
Linguistics 26: 425-453.

Milton H. Erickson:
The Handshake Induction

Dynamics Of
The Handshake Induction
The handshake induction is one of the most fascinating and effective procedures
developed by Erickson for initiating trance. Is is essentially a surprise that
interrupts a subject's habitual framework to initiate a momentary confusion. A
receptivity for clarifying suggestions is thus initiated with an expectancy for further
stimuli and direction. In a letter in Weitzenhoffer in 1061 Erickson described his
approach to the handshake induction as a means of initiating catalepsy. When he
released the subject's hand, it would remain fixed in a cataleptic position or would
keep moving in any direction he initiated. He used this approach as a test to assess
hypnotic susceptibility and as an induction procedure. The prerequisites for a
successful handshake induction are a willingness on the part of the subject to be
approached, an appropriate situation, and the suitability of the situation for a
continuation of the experience. An edited version of his outline of the whole process
and some variations is as follows:
15
The Handshake Induction
Initiation: When I begin by shaking hands, I do so normally. The "hypnotic touch"
then begins when I let loose. The letting loose becomes transformed from a firm
grip into a gentle touch by the thumb, a lingering drawing away of the little finger,
a faint brushing of the subject's hand with the middle finger - just enough vague
sensation to attract the attention. As the subject gives attention to the touch of
your thumb, you shift to a touch with your little finger. As your subject's attention
follows that, you shift to a touch with your middle finger and then again to the
thumb.
This arousal of attention is merely an arousal without constituting a stimulus for a
response.
The subject's withdrawal from the handshake is arrested by this attention arousal,
which establishes a waiting set, and expectancy.
Then almost, but not quite simultaneously (to ensure separate neural recognition),
you touch the undersurface of the hand (wrist) so gently that it barely suggests an
upward push. This is followed by a similar utterly slight downward touch, and then I
sever contact so gently that the subject does not know exactly when - and the
subject's hand is left going neither up nor down, but cataleptic.
Termination: If you don't want your subject to know what you are doing, you
simply distract their attention, usually by some appropriate remark, and casually
terminate. Sometimes they remark, "What did you say? I got absentminded there
for moment and wasn't paying attention to anything." This is slightly distressing to
the subjects and indicative of the fact that their attention was so focused and
fixated on the peculiar hand stimuli that they were momentarily entranced so they
did not hear what was said.
Utilisation: Any utilisation leads to increasing trance depth. All utilisation should
proceed as a continuation of extension of the initial procedure. Much can be done
nonverbally; for example, if any subjects are just looking blankly at me, I may
slowly shift my gaze downward, causing them to look at their hand, which I touch
and say "look at this spot.". This intensifies the trance state. Then, whether the
subjects are looking at you or at their hand or just staring blankly, you can use
your left hand to touch their elevated right hand from above or the side - so long as
you merely give the suggestion of downward movement. Occasionally a downward
nudge or push is required. If a strong push or nudge is required, check for
anaesthesia.
There are several colleagues who won't shake hands with me unless I reassure
them first, because they developed a profound glove anaesthesia when I used this
procedure on them. I shook hands with them, looked them in the eyes, slowly yet
rapidly immobilised my facial expression, and then focused my eyes on a spot far
behind them. I then slowly and imperceptibly removed my hand from theirs and
slowly moved to one side out of their direct line of vision. I have had it described
variously, but the following is one of the most graphic. "I had heard about you and
I wanted to meet you and you looked so interested and you shook hands so
warmly. All of a sudden my arm was gone and your face changed and got so far
away. Then the left side of your face, until that slowly vanished also.". At that
moment the subject's eyes were fixed straight ahead, so that when I moved to the
left out to his line of vision, the left side of my face "disappeared" first and then the
right side also. "Your face slowly came back, you came close and smiled and said
you would like to use me Saturday afternoon. Then I noticed my hand and asked
you about it because I couldn't feel my whole arm... you just said to keep it that
way just a little while for the experience."
You give the elevated right hand (now cataleptic in the handshake position) the
suggestion of a downward movement with a light touch. At the same time, with
your other hand, you give a gentle touch indicating an upward movement for the
subject's left hand. Then you have his left hand lifting, right hand lowering. When
right hand reaches the lap, it will stop. The upward course of the left hand may
stop or it may continue. I am likely to give it another touch and direct it toward the
16
face so that some part will touch one eye. That effects eye closure and is very
effective in inducing a deep trance without a single word having been spoken.
There are other nonverbal suggestions. for example, what if my subject make no
response to my efforts with his right hand and the situation looks hopeless? If he is
not looking at my face, my slow, gentle out-of-keeping-with-the-situation
movements (remember: out-of-keeping) compel him to look at my face. I freeze
my expression, refocus my gaze, and by slow head movements direct his gaze to
his left hand, toward which my right hand is slowly, apparently purposelessly
moving. As my right hand touches his left with a slight, gentle, upward movement,
my left hand with very gentle firmness, just barely enough, presses down on his
right hand for a moment until it moves. Thus, I confirm and reaffirm the downward
movement of his right hand, a suggestion he accepts along with the tactile
suggestion of left hand levitation. This upward movement is augmented by the fact
that he has been breathing in time with me and that my right hand gives his left
hand that upward touch at the moment when he is beginning an inspiration. This is
further reinforced by whatever peripheral vision he has that notes the upward
movement of my body as I inhale and as I slowly lift my body and head up and
backward, when I give his left hand that upward touch."
Erickson's description of his handshake induction is s bit breathtaking to the
beginner. How does one keep all of that in mind? How does one develop such a
gentle touch and such skill? Above all, how does one learn to utilise whatever
happens in the situation as a means of further focusing the subject's attention and
inner involvement so that trance develops? Obviously a certain amount of
dedication and patience are required to develop such skill. It is much more than a
matter of simply shaking hands in a certain way. Shaking hands is simply a context
in which Erickson makes contact with a person. He then utilises this context to fix
attention inward and so set the situation for that possible development of trance.
As he shakes hands, Erickson is himself fully focused on where the subject's
attention is. Initially the subjects' attention is on a conventional social encounter,
then, with the unexpected touches as their hand is released, there is a momentary
confusion and their attention is rapidly focused on his hand. At this point "resistant"
subjects might rapidly withdraw their hand and end the situation. Subjects who are
ready to experience trance will be curious about what is happening. Their attention
is fixed and they remain open and ready for further directing stimuli. The directing
touches are so gentle and unusual that subjects' cognition has no way of evaluating
them; the subjects have been given a rapid series of nonverbal cues to keep their
hand fixed in one position (see last paragraph of the initiation), but they are not
aware of it. Their hand responds to the directing touches for immobility, but they
do not know why. It is simply a case of an automatic response on the kinesthetic
level that initially defies conscious analysis because the subjects have had no
previous experience with it. The directing touches for movement are responded to
on the same level, with a similar gap in awareness and understanding.
The subjects find themselves responding in an unusual way without knowing why.
Their attention is now directed inward in an intense search for an answer or for
some orientation. This inner direction and search is the basic nature of "trance".
Subjects may become so preoccupied in their inner search that the usual sensory-
perceptual processes of our normal reality orientation are momentarily suspended.
The subjects may then experience an anaesthesia, a lacuna in vision or audition, a
time distortion, a deja vu, a sense of disorientation or vertigo, and so on. At this
moment the subjects are open for further verbal or nonverbal suggestions that can
intensify the inner search (trance) in one direction or another.
[From Erickson M.H., Rossi E. & Rossi S. Hypnotic Realities. New York:
Irvington, 1976.]


The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

17
'He gave man speech, and speech created thought,
Which is the measure of the universe'
- Prometheus Unbound,
Shelley
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis as we know it today can be broken down into two basic
principles: linguistic determinism and linguistic relativity.
Linguistic Determinism: A Definition
Linguistic Determinism refers to the idea that the language we use to some extent
determines the way in which we view and think about the world around us. The
concept has generally been divided into two separate groups - 'strong' determinism
and 'weak' determinism. Strong determinism is the extreme version of the theory,
stating that language actually determines thought, that language and thought are
identical. Although this version of the theory would attract few followers today -
since it has strong evidence against it, including the possibility of translation
between languages - we will see that in the past this has not always been the case.
Weak determinism, however, holds that thought is merely affected by or influenced
by our language, whatever that language may be. This version of determinism is
widely accepted today.
Wilhelm von Humboldt: The 'Weltanschauung' Hypothesis.
Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835) was the first European to combine a knowledge
of various languages with a philosophical background; he equated language and
thought exactly in a hypothesis we now call the 'Weltanschauung' (world-view)
hypothesis, in fact a version of the extreme form of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.
Humboldt maintained that language actually determined thought:
Der mensch lebt mit den Gegenstnden hauptschlich, ja...sogar ausschliesslich so,
wie die Sprache sie ihm zufhrt."
Humboldt viewed thought as being impossible without language, language as
completely determining thought. On closer inspection, we can see that this extreme
hypothesis leads to a question: how, if there was no thought before language, did
language arise in the first place? Humboldt answers this by adhering to the theory
that language is a platonic object, comparable to a living organism which just
suddenly evolved one day entirely of its own accord.
Linguistic Relativity: A Definition
Linguistic relativity states that distinctions encoded in one language are unique to
that language alone, and that "there is no limit to the structural diversity of
languages". If one imagines the colour spectrum, it is a continuum, each colour
gradually blending into the next; there are no sharp boundaries. But we impose
boundaries; we talk of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. It takes
little thought to realise that these discriminations are arbitrary - and indeed in other
languages the boundaries are different. In neither Spanish, Italian nor Russian is
there a word that corresponds to the English meaning of 'blue', and likewise in
Spanish there are two words 'esquina' and 'rincon', meaning an inside and an
outside corner, which necessitate the use of more than one word in English to
convey the same concept. These examples show that the language we use,
whichever it happens to be, divides not only the colour spectrum, but indeed our
whole reality, which is a 'kaleidoscopic flux of impressions', into completely
arbitrary compartments.
The Notion of Codability
Codability has been defined by Peter Herriot as 'the ease with which a language tag
can be used to distinguish one item from another'. Something is codable if it falls
within the scope of readily available terms used in whatever particular language.
Degrees of codability vary, in that while one language may be capable of
expressing a concept with just one word, in another may be necessary to use a
whole phrase to get across the same notion; a famous example of this is the fact
that in Eskimo there are many different words for snow, depending on which kind of
snow one is talking about.
18
If we are looking for evidence to prove the weak version of linguistic determinism,
then we need look no further than various experiments that have been conducted
around codability. For example, monolingual speakers of an American-Indian
language called Zuni - a language which does not recognise any difference between
yellow and orange - had more difficulty in re-identifying objects of such colours
after a period of time. With monolingual English speakers, this difficulty is absent,
since we make a verbal distinction.
This only offers support for the weak version of the hypothesis, though, because it
would be wrong to say that the Zuni speakers did not actually perceive a difference.
So the more highly codable a concept is, the easier it is to retrieve from the
unconscious. This we will come back to later when considering the relationship
between a Freudian theory and linguistic determinism.
The Notion of Translatability
Closely related to the notion of codability is the notion of translatability. Although
different languages may have different ways of dividing up their spectra of
experience into verbal forms, we find it is still quite possible to translate from one
language into another. Although someone translating from one language into
another may find it necessary to use a whole phrase in the target language to
communicate the concept expressed in the original language with only a single
word, this is achievable. In the Australian aboriginal language Pinupti, the word
'katarta' refers to the hole left by a goanna when it has broken the surface of its
burrow after hibernation. It takes seventeen words to translate that concept into
English, but the result is fine, lacking perhaps some of the conciseness but none of
the subtlety of the Pinupti word.
Of course inter-language translatability again offers evidence against the strong
version of determinism. The differences between the lexicons of individuals would
carry great import. I know the meaning of the word 'saltatoria'; the person sitting
next to me word-processing a dissertation on paediatrics would probably not know
the meaning of it. This does not, of course, mean that I would be unable to explain
to him what it meant. Of course another thing to bear in mind is the fact that words
are often borrowed from one language into another, for instance the French
borrowing 'le weekend' from English. This sort of borrowing would be impossible if
language determined thought completely. And if we look just a little further, it
becomes obvious that if it was true that language dictated thought, and that
concepts were untranslatable, then children would be incapable of learning
language at all; for how would a child learn its first word?
Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf
'Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of
social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the
particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society.
It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the
use of language and that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific
problems of communication and reflection. The fact of the matter is that the "real
world" is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the
group.'
This famous passage from the American linguist and anthropologist Edward Sapir
(1884-1936)'s 'The Status Of Linguistics As A Science', written in 1929,
demonstrates the dominating thought of what has come to be called by all sorts of
names including the 'Sapir-Whorf hypothesis', the 'Whorfian hypothesis' and more
plainly the 'Linguistic Relativity hypothesis'. We can see the reason for the variety
of titles for the hypothesis - as well as the influence Sapir must have had on his
pupil Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897-1941) - if we look at the following passage from
Whorf himself, which propounds much the same viewpoint:
'We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages. The categories
and types that we isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find there
because they stare every observer in the face; on the contrary, the world is
presented in a kaleidoscopic flux of impressions which has to be organised by our
19
minds - and this means largely by the linguistic systems in our minds. We cut
nature up, organise it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largely
because we are parties to an agreement that holds throughout our speech
community and is codified in the patterns of our language. The agreement is, of
course, an implicit and unstated one, but its terms are absolutely obligatory; we
cannot talk at all except by subscribing to the organisation and classification of data
which the agreement decrees.'
Surprisingly, though, neither Sapir or Whorf made it very clear whether they were
arguing for strong or weak determinism. At times we are "at the mercy of"
whatever language we speak, while at others our linguistic habits simply
"predispose certain choices of interpretation".
Whorf, originally a 'fire prevention engineer' by trade, spent a lot of his time
studying the language of the Hopi Indians of Arizona, who make no distinction in
their language between past, present and future tenses; where in English it seems
natural to distinguish between 'I see the girl', 'I saw the girl' and 'I will see the girl',
this is not an option in Hopi. This apparently made quite an impression on Whorf,
who imagined that the scientists of the day and the Hopi must see the world very
differently...although the philosopher Max Black considers that 'they may be
expected to have pretty much the same concept of time that we have' in spite of
this. And Whorf himself notices, 'The Hopi language is capable of accounting for and
describing correctly all observable phenomena of the universe'. Another
characteristic of the Hopi tongue is that there is just a single word - 'masa'ytaka' -
for everything that flies, including insects, aeroplanes and pilots.
Freud
'The question 'How does a thing become conscious?' could be put more
advantageously thus: 'How does a thing become pre-conscious?'. And the answer
would be: 'By coming into connexion with the verbal images that correspond to it'.
This quotation from Freud's book 'The Ego and the Id' helps us make what I
consider to be a helpful distinction when talking about the influence of language on
thought: whether we are talking about conscious or unconscious thought. I have
suspected for a long time that language actually gives rise to consciousness, to
thought that is available to conscious introspection; thought of an unconscious
nature takes place, I believe, from the day we are born, as the cognitive faculties
exercise themselves upon the world of the child. But it is only when the child learns
the meaning of words, learns to associate them with concepts, that he or she
becomes 'conscious', in the sense of becoming aware of his/her existence as the
object of other's thoughts and judgements, and exercising upon him/herself the
internalised critic Freud calls the Superego. The child learns the words 'good' and
'bad'; thought processes become their own objects for the first time.
I think perhaps the answer might be that conscious thought is thought that has
been given a verbal symbol to coexist alongside it. Thus thought that occurs below
a conscious level, both the 'simple' thought of cognitive processes and the complex
thought of say, repressed ideas and affects, remains unconscious until verbal
correspondences are found. More importantly, conscious thought may be thought of
as unconscious thought that has been given access to consciousness through the
use of verbal symbolia; thus words bring concepts from the conscious mind into the
unconscious. But there is a price to be paid: what I believe to be an unlimited
variety of concepts that could be brought to consciousness have but a limited
number of words in which to clothe themselves.
This, of course, relates to the question of whether language determines thought. I
think it fair to say in the light of Freud's theory, which seems to me to be
undoubtedly correct, that yes, language does determine conscious thought, for
conscious thought is by Freud's definition thought that has been made conscious
through language; but since the majority of thought is unquestionably unconscious,
we cannot say that language determines thought wholly.
Conclusion
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As regards linguistic determinism, it seems that most contemporary thinkers are
quite content to accept the weaker version of the theory, that thought is indeed
influenced by the linguistic systems available to us, but not much more; certainly
not there are not many linguists today who would support Wilhelm von Humboldt's
'Weltanschauung' hypothesis.
It can hardly be argued, either, that there is any limit to the structural diversity of
languages. There are plenty of languages available for us to study, and each one
divides the world up into compartments in different ways from other languages.
To me it seems as if it would be profitable if some thought were given to the link
between language and consciousness, the conscious coding of thought via verbal
symbols and the way in which conscious thought is encoded in them.
Bibliography
Black, M.1962. Models and Metaphors. New York: Cornell University Press.
Brown, R.1958. Words and Things. Illinois: The Free Press.
Brown, Roger L.1968. Wilhelm von Humboldt's Conception of Linguistic Relativity.
Paris: Mouton.
Ellis, A. and Beattie, G.1986. The Psychology of Language and Communication.
New York: Guilford Press.
Freud, S.1927. The Ego and the Id. London: The Hogarth Press.
Lyons, J.1981. Language and Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Penn, J.1972. Linguistic Relativity versus Innate Ideas. Paris: Mouton.
Rossi-Landi, F.1973. Ideologies of Linguistic Relativity. Paris: Mouton.
Slobin, D.1974. Psycholinguistics. London: Scott, Foresman and Company.

Links

Frequently Asked Questions regarding the scientific study of hypnosis, written
and maintained by Todd I. Stark; probably the best thing out there on the subject.
Frequently Asked Questions regarding Neuro-Linguistic Programming, answered
by co-developer Richard Bandler.
"The Pattern Which Connects": a good page about Gregory Bateson written by
Candice Bradley, Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at
Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin.
Neuro-Linguistic Programming Archive courtesy of Lee Lady, containing
excellent articles on various aspects of NLP which originally appeared in the
newsgroup sci.psychology.
Introduction To Neuro-Linguistic Programming written by Terry Lemmons; a
nice introduction to the basic NLP attitude and concepts.
Principia Cybernetica is a site which covers aspects of cybernetics and systems
theory.

Glossary

Technical Terms And Significant Figures
Analogue
Digital
Gregory Bateson
Son of the famous geneticist William Bateson, Gregory
Identification
Metacommunication
A term first used by the linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf, 'metacommunication' refers
to
Milton H. Erickson (1901-1980)
Erickson is considered by many to be the foremost practitioner of medical hypnosis.
Mirroring
Neuro-Linguistic Programming
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Noam Chomsky
Presupposition
Projection
A Freudian ego defence mechanism. When Tom Waits sings, 'The Piano Has Been
Drinking', we know he is not talking about the piano...
Reframing
Although in NLP circles this word refers to a specific
Resistance
A Freudian ego defence mechanism whereby an unconscious idea, memory or
desire is kept from emerging into consciousness. In a broader sense the term
'resistance' also refers to a person's conscious opposition to an idea, memory or
desire.
Zeigarnik Effect

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