In and Out of Language

John W. Powell
Abstract:
Influenced by Wittgensteinian suggestions that philosophically interesting
entities may be different things in different examples, I take up the question, what is in
language and what is outside language? The question comes out of a philosophically
tempting line of thought, that we know what language is and we know what is in
language, an idea which is old and still strong. But examples not dictated by that
temptation or the picture behind help show the temptation is suspect. Essentialism is
not the only thing at staketheres a plague on several houses at work here, including
the usual suspects thought to be alternatives to essentialism: constructionism and
deconstructionism, views that language is natural or is conventional, as well as views
that a linguistic turn will help us make progress in philosophy. Language, as
philosophers have conceived it, begins to look like a mythological beast.
Wittgenstein might be suggesting that some of the things we philosophers are
tempted to define in a context-free way should rather be recognized as different inand
these listed items are themselves differentdifferent examples, different situations,
different contexts. This seems consistent with e.g. Austins work on the argument from
illusion in Sense and Sensibilia and in Austins treatments of truth and reality. Leaving
aside problems of exposition and consistency, we might try to test or to appraise this
suggestion by thinking about our temptation to define language in a context-free way.
There are several ways we could go with this. We might check against examples (such
as when a mother tells her child to watch her language, and when a literature class is
assigned an analysis of the language of Act III of Antony and Cleopatra, and when
someone not a native English speaker asks what the word language means in the
book title English as a Second Language) in which someone encounters talk about
language, asks for an explanation, and gets nothing like the philosophical account as a
reply. Or we might take the terms of the philosophically tempting answer (such as,
perhaps, signs, meaning, sounds, communication, intentions), and check against
examples in which those terms show up in nonphilosophically-loaded conversations,
and find, again, that explanations in those examples have nothing in common with the
philosophical lines of thought we found so tempting.
I here do a small piece of that work. When we are tempted by the idea that we
know what language is in a context-free way or we are tempted to define language in a
way that allegedly holds for all contexts, its likely we will then think we know when
something is in language and when it is not. My results suggest there is something
wrong with the seemingly innocuous philosophical problem, What is in language and
what is outside of language? I lay out a temptation, then an unsuccessful grappling
with the temptation which leaves us sympathetic with Wittgenstein in a prisoner-of-war
camp at the end of W.W. I, then bring examples to bear in a way which shows the
question to be more problematic.
The temptation
First of all, it is a strong temptation for some of us to think that language is easy to
spot, that it consists of sentences, words, utterances, which we see being used by people
for communication. The sentences and words are not themselves the things that are
being communicated, nor are they the things which they are about, but the words and
sentences instead stand for some things which are not themselves in language. The
process of using language, then, involves taking things which are not in language and
finding ways to get them into language or to provide language in order to talk about
them. The details of this process, we may think, will be perhaps made clear with more
results from neurolinguistics, but in general there will be some kinds of mapping
functions which take message types (I borrow this term from philosophers who seem to
have been influenced by certain kinds of linguists) and map those onto utterance types
and then, with those mapping functions providing the general rules, utterances will be
generated which make their way from speakers to hearers and then by a reversal of the
rules for generating language the uttered sentences will be heard and will be
understood by those hearers.
An example
So consider the following example and some resulting things we would say: We have
taught our dog not to get on the couch. For a couple of years, say, I've never seen him
on the couch and neither have you, who live with me. Unbeknownst to us, though, he's
been routinely sleeping on the couch for years while we are gone, but since he doesn't
shed much and you and I are both oblivious and your vision is not so hot, and he
always gets up and is at the door jumping around when we come in, we don't know
that he gets on the couch.
One fateful day I come home alone, pet the dog at the door, put groceries away,
have a little more time than usual, and carry the newspaper in from the kitchen and sit
on the couch. I lean back and yawn and put my hand on the couch beside me and after
a bit realize the couch is warm, look at it and see a couple of dog hairs. I feel the couch.
Definitely warm. I hear your car in the driveway and the dog starts whimpering and
going in circles at the door.
Let's take a break for a moment to check on the health of our temptations. We
have some candidates for things which are not yet in language though I'm about to tell
you the dog got on the couch. The fact that the dog got on the couch, for instance--
surely that's not in language. I cannot say what I don't know and have not yet thought,
namely that the dog got on the couch countless times in the last few years, so surely
that's not in language. The dog curled up lying with its nose on its tail on our nice, still-
in-nearly-new-condition couch while you and I are out in the world making it safe for
philosophy--that dog, that couch, that curl, nor the combination of all those, is not a
linguistic object, not a sentence, not an utterance, not in language. There is the sentence
I am about to utter, clearly language, but what the sentence conveys or is about is
separate from the sentence. I could, after all, not tell you, since this is going to be very
hard on you and if I don't tell you you'll probably never find out and the dog and I can
share this guilty secret, a secret that never finds its way into words, so never into
language.
We could make a tabulated list in two columns, what's language and what's not
language. What I tell you after I've given you a chance to be greeted by the dog and to
take off your coat and I've told you your phone messages, what I tell you, now that's in
language. What you understand based on what I tell you is not language nor in
language. What I am prompted by or put into words is not language. This is easy.
There's the string of words--that's language. There's what the string of words is about,
the surroundings for the string of words, the states of affairs which lead up to and
prompt me to produce the string of words and the effects of the string of words, and all
of that is not language.
And yet. Always there is the And yet. There are some bothersome things about
the example. First, though, back to the example.
You come in the door, crouch down and tell the dog, falsely though you don't
know it, that he's a Gooood dog, yes he is, and then you take off your coat and I tell you
your phone messages and that I'm making the pesto with pine nuts, and when you look
toward the paper on the couch I tell you, "The dog got on the couch."
Philosophical Doubts--The First Moves
Here are some of the bothersome things about the example. The thing that I am
going to put into words is, the dog got on the couch. What has been going on for years,
not in words but still, is that the dog got on the couch. What you come to understand is
the dog got on the couch. The state of affairs leading up to my telling you what I wind
up telling you is the same thing as what I tell you, namely, the dog got on the couch.
Not the cat, not the hamster or the neighbor kid's tarantula, not under or against or into
or even on top of, not one of our several couches but the, not the recliner or the coffee
table or the window ledge, but just the couch. The dog got on the couch. It is
bothersome that in noting the things not in language I keep doing something like telling
someone something, and what I tell them is the same thing that Im tempted to think is
not in language. The bothersome things get worse. Consider the truth, which
Augustine points out is neither Hebrew nor Greek nor Latin nor barbaric of tongue.
You speak French fluently and I a little, and both of us of course know Latin and Greek
and German since we are philosophers. There are then a lot of alternatives for what we
are tempted to call the utterances, the language, by means of which I tell you the dog
got on the couch. And it is perhaps a dictate out of our philosophical temptation that
the propositional content of all those sentences is not the same as any of he sentences
themselves. That is, I could say "Der Hund erhielt auf der Couch." or I could say (since
my French is very bad, "Le chien a obtenu sur le divan," perhaps because I don't want
the dog to know we are talking about him--but the bothersome thing is that the
propositional content, the truth which we look for, which we think is something
underlying or more basic than Hebrew or Latin or Greek or our barbaric English is that
the dog got on the couch. Indeed, what we are saying in French or German is that the
dog got on the couch, at least if we are successful in saying it. And the it is that the dog
got on the couch.
Somewhere in here we may be struck like Paul on the road to Damascus or
Wittgenstein on the Russian Front, and we will think things like the following: We
cannot get away from language. The limits of language are the limits of my world. We
will, perhaps, sing in harmony with Derridas line, There is nothing which is not text.
We will think we cannot see in the way human beings with language see without
language being present in our seeing. All, all, is in language. The structure of the world
has to be the structure of language. (We might talk of how language informs our
structure of the world, or the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, on language "shaping"
perception.) Seeing for us is done in language. There's nothing that's not in language.
The thing that you and I did not know for the last two years is that the dog got on the
couch. What is that thing? Well, the only way we have to make sense of it is to talk, to
point out by telling, it wasn't the cat or the canary or the goldfinch or Virginia Woolf
and it didn't just think about it it actually got on it and it didn't get around it or in it or
on top of it and it was not one of several but the, and it wasn't the windowledge or the
recliner it was the couch--and in the face of the realization that the things we thought
were not in language can only be made sense of by talking or writing and so within
what our temptation tells us is language, whatever shall we do?? Leaving out all that
training, all that self-esteem we achieved by being good at being dog trainers, all that
comparative value of being convinced that we were smarter than a dog.
Next: Language in Philosophy, Language in the World
Constructing the example so we have several languages at our disposal provides
a way for philosophers to think about propositions and Augustine's crack about the
truth, but now it might serve another purpose. It might provide a way for talk about
language to show up, not just as we think philosophically from the outside about the
example (and so in thinking shaped by our temptations), but within the example. If
there is an issue about the extent to which in both of the sections above I am being
guided by a picture of language rather than am finding anything out from the example,
then having talk of language make sense in the example could help me check on the
intelligibility of my temptations.
When I tell you about the dog getting on the couch and I do so in miserable
French because the dog does not understand French and I'm not sure I want him to
know that we are onto him, you might ask, since you are the one with good French and
my accent, grammar, vocabulary, is all tres abominable, "John, what language are you
speaking? And Why?" So there's language in the example.
Is there anything in the example which is not in language? With the small
reminder above of what talking about language might be in the example, then this
question looks enormously problematic. In the example, the philosophical question,
which after all is different from What language are you speaking? will be baffling, a
surprise visitor. It is one which can only be made sense of by buying wholesale a large
matched set of philosophical portmanteaus, steamer trunks, pet carriers, suitcases,
hatboxes, and carry-on bags. That raises the issue of whether the question about what is
in language and what is not does make sense. That is, the question requires we do think
we can see language when it is before us and it is the
words/utterances/sounds/sentences people put together in order to communicate with
each other. But this is not the sense in which language comes up in the example.
There are lots of ways not to investigate this. For instance, we might want to
quarrel (it's a grand tradition for centuries to quarrel) about what it is the words etc.
stand for, whether it's irredeemably mental for instance, or how best to give an
illuminating account of meanings or thoughts or ideas or content or messages or
information or propositions or illocutionary act potentials or intentions or behaviors-
and-dispositions- to-behave or Gricean or Gaukerian intentions or remnants of
meaning. We could do that without calling the picture into question at all. We have, in
fact. We do, in fact. We seem to have a gift for not investigating this picture while we
keep our heads down tweezing splinters. That such an excellent philosopher as
Stephen Schiffer can do such good tweezing (while starting with and maintaining the
view that human beings have sound-making and mark-making proclivities, when we
would never say such a thing except as warmup for a baggage-buying spree) is
evidence of the strength of this temptation.
Could I make sense of anything like the philosopher's question in the example?
You've asked me a question or couple of questions, namely "What language are you
speaking? And Why?" By the first you dont imply that you dont know Im trying to
talk in French, you are only telling me how bad I am at it. For the second, I could
answer by holding up my finger to my mouth and pointing behind my hand at the dog,
and repeating my report. Or, perhaps, by shushing you and taking your arm and
ushing you outside so I can share my mournful news in private. I might in the course of
that answer your question directly, apologizing for mangling French and telling you I
was trying to tell you in French so the dog would not catch on. If I perseverate in
French, you might cover your ears and say, "All right already, stick with a language you
know. I get dizzy when you talk in French." Maybe we would be able to push (I'm not
quite sure how--maybe in a later moment when you are embarrassing me at a party by
recounting this incident) toward a comment that part of the (not example but)
conversation was in French and part in English, so part in one language but part in
another. None of which would support a claim that there is anything in the example
that a philosopher would recognize which is either in language or not in language, or
not-not in language.
Still, the picture has a good grip. Even without talk in the example about
language occasioned by our having different languages at our disposal, we are strongly
tempted to think there's language present in the example. If I tell you something, then
there must be language, even with no French on the scene. Further, if I tell you
something, then, as T.S. Eliot has Sweeney say, I gotta use words when I talk to you; in
order to tell you; I utter things; I generate strings of words, I make sounds; I produce
sentences. Each of these deserves its own investigation.
Lets consider words. You might in the example furrow your brows and ask
about "divan;" you might remark, in a perhaps slightly overly-calm tone of voice, that
no one uses "divan" any more. I might furrow my brow and say that's what my little
English-French dictionary gives, and ask, "What word would you recommend?" You
might suggest the word canape as more appropriate or common, and while I might
wonder about finger foods, for which of course the dog also has a weakness, I'll trust
you on this and trade one word for the other.
There, doesn't that show we've got words? And of course it does--two, anyway.
Remember though what in the case makes sense of the talk about words, namely my
gaffe and the fact that divan is likely to be found in English-French dictionaries with the
pages now yellow and crumbling. Without something like that (a spectacularly
mispronounced word, perhaps, or forgetting and putting a German word into the
middle of what I tell you) how would anything about words come up?
Well, of course we've seen one way it can come up; we philosophers shine our
Junior Batlights with the silhouettes taped to the lenses into the example and then lots
of things are revealed, most of them looking remarkably like the bats we knew were
there.
Its not that the fact IS in language, or that the world is in language, though those
might be useful as therapeutic moves against our picture. The picture of language as
consisting of sentences/words/utterances which stand for things which are not the
sentences etc. is supported by a tissue of begged questions, by a picture which misleads
us about how we think and talk when we are not in the grip of that philosophical
temptation. This investigation is not a proof, but my results do seem consistent with
and supportive of suggestions I learned from Austin, Wittgenstein, Frank Ebersole, and
their followers who taught me. First, the existence of the problem (Whats in language,
whats outside of language?) may not be the result of any real need for explanation so
much as it is the result of a picture, a rudimentary and abstract sketch of human beings
using language, conversing, in which we seem to see hidden internal objects which
need some signs as proxies to give them public existence. Second, the fact that language
in nonphilosophical examples is more diverse than in philosophical accounts suggests
the latter may not describe at all those things of which they are allegedly accounts.
Third, the inconsistency between my philosophical temptations and the examples may
mean I need to spend more time in justifying the problem before I get to the arguments
for any of the possible answers. Finally, perhaps these accounts of language are in fact
accounts mostly of our own projections, and thickets of misunderstandings need to be
swept away before we can achieve any positive results on these topics.
A bibliography would note debts to Frank Ebersole, Don S. Levi, Harry Nielsen, Bill
Seidensticker, Jacques Derrida, Will Davie, and Wittgenstein. If you write, Ill be happy to say
more.
jwp2@humboldt.edu