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| Description of Project |  [to
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It seems plausible to suppose that a description of a language system should indicate the way in which language is an expression of thought (the word 'thought' is here given a wide interpretation, which approximates intentionality), or, in other words, what resources language provides for indicating a speaker's intentions. A traditional view puts thinking before language, and in that case the objective becomes one of describing in what way a given thought can be put forward within one or another language system (where the description may take into consideration what in current terminology is usually divided into syntactic, semantic, and/or pragmatic factors). If, on the other hand, it is held that different languages contain expressive potentials that are not commensurable (a point of which language researchers have made us aware over the last two hundred years), it becomes impossible to cling to this kind of view concerning the objective of language description. (It is necessary to guard against a misunderstanding of the way in which the terms 'resources' and 'expressive potentials' have been used here: the point is not only that different languages can provide different ways of indicating one and the same thing, but that what one can attempt to express is relative to the language.)
In this sense, language can be regarded as a constitutive element of our thinking. But in that case we are faced with the question in which language this constitutive relation can be described. None of the alternatives seems acceptable: if we assume that there definitely is a given metalanguage in which every human language can be described, we also deny that different languages in fact have incommensurable expressive potentials that can not be compared. And if on the other hand we accept that there is no given frame of reference for describing a language, it seems that we ought to give up the quest for defining once and for all what characteristics a given utterance has: the description will vary depending on the purpose it is made for, and on what other utterance this utterance is asserted with. Consequently, the language characteristics that a certain utterance in Swedish consist of, will, among other things, depend on whether the utterance is explained, say, in Norwegian or in Japanese. There is no answer to the question of which of the various possible descriptions would indicate what the 'real' nature of the utterance is. This does not entail linguistic relativism: the description has to 'be true of' the language that is being described, but at the same time it has to be true in the language of the description.
(This also implies that the division between the contributions made by an utterance and its context to the recipient's understanding of the utterance can not be univocally determined. The concept of a context - what is included in the context of a statement, and how to demarcate between factors internal and external to a language in a speech situation - is therefore in itself dependent on the context.
The dilemma outlined above can also be expessed with reference to how an individual learns her native tongue. If we assume that learning occurs by her acquiring knowledge of her native tongue, it can be asked in which language this knowledge is supposed to be formulated. If it is formulated in the language she is currently learning, the definition becomes circular, and if on the other hand her knowledge is formulated in terms of some other language, there emerges an infinite regress, since we would have to ask how she has learnt that other language in the first place. (In case one tries to bypass the dilemma by presuming that the individual has a congenital language, in accordance with the ideas put forward by Noam Chomsky and Jerry Fodor, i.e. that there is no such thing as learning a first language, it at the same time implies a denial of the possibility that an individual can acquire various languages with incommensurable expressive potentials - this is analogous with the presumption of a metalanguage given once and for all.) To try to evade the dilemma by claiming that the knowledge in question is not formulated in any language would hardly be understandable, assuming that the knowledge is supposed to have the characteristics of a knowledge about a language. However, the dilemma does not arise at all if the learning of a congenital language is not described in terms of acquiring knowledge of a language, but in terms of acquiring a practical skill: a child learns to act and relate herself in ways which the world around her approves as an expression of her having become a participant in common practices. Hence, the unclear objective of explaining linguistic ability within linguistics should yield to an attempt to describe the relations between the speaker and the speach situation in which the ability to use a language reveals itself.
The fact that these problems have not been widely recognised probably has a historical background: Western linguistics has arisen in a situation where the task was to develop methods to learn a language, or to make translations, within a family of closely related European languages. The work that has been undertaken has had a very narrow aim, and the variation in expressive potentials that have had to be taken into consideration has been limited. It can be maintained that this specific historical situation has left deep marks in the Western view of what language is and, consequently, has also determined the philosophical view of language.
The vastness of the changes in the description of language phenomena
for which this suggested shift of perspective can provide a foundation
have hardly been realized yet. It can be seen as one of the greatest challenges
the humanistic sciences are currently facing. The limitation of linguistics
to the study of an arbitrary constrained language system has tended to
give it the character of a natural science. By ridding itself of this self-imposed
limitation, the study of human language will once again be united with
the study of human culture.
| Participants in the Project | [to
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The Project is supervised by Prof. Lars Hertzberg, Åbo Akademi University
Anders Burman, Åbo Akademi University
Dr. Olav Gundersen, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim.
Fil. kand. Martin Gustafsson, Uppsala University
Fil. lic. Saara Haapamäki, Åbo Akademi University
Fil. kand. Torsten Johansson, Uppsala University
BA Gudmundur Steingrímsson, University of Iceland
| Realization of Project | [to
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The project "Language and Praxis" aims at promoting research cooperation between Scandinavian Philosophical Institutions interested in mutual critical discussion of current standpoints within the philosophy of language. The above-mentioned questions will be highlighted from various angles by means of individual research projects by the participants.
One of the main figures in modern philosophy of language is Gottlob Frege. In his monograph on the development of the philosophy of language, 'Genealogisk kritikk av teorier om språket som formelt system' (Genealogical criticism of the theories of language as a formal system), Olav Gundersen is endeavoring to place Frege's views on language in a historical context in order to establish in what degree they have been shaped by the dilemma described above. Frege's philosophical objectives can be understood against the background that on the one hand he was influenced by what Charles Taylor has called the expressive paradigm in linguistics, which means that our thinking is linguistically constituted in the way described above, but that on the other hand he strived to avoid what could appear to be the paradigm's relativist consequences for logic and mathematics. In his study Gundersen opposes certain influential interpretations of Frege (e.g. Baker and Hacker, Sluga, Dummet).
Thorsten Johansson's research plan, which also concerns Frege, takes note of a more specific problem that also illustrates a more general set of problems. By studying the application of Frege's distinction 'Sinn' - 'Bedeutung' in reference to proper nouns he wants to show that sentences that include proper nouns can have various logical forms depending on whether they are employed to make a an assertion or to make grammatical remarks, even though their linguistic form is identical. This and other examples illustrate that the relation between a sentence and the reality the sentence is supposed to represent (the relation which the meaning of a sentence is taken to consist of) depend on the use made of of the sentence.
The idea of language as a system that can be described in a metalanguage is closely related to a notion of rules that are presumed to describe language or to determine its use. In his doctoral dissertation, with the preliminar title 'Institutions, Rule-Following and Language', Martin Gustafsson intends to scrutinize certain problems concerning the notion of a rule. He tries to show, among other things, that the concept 'constitutive rule' as it is used in certain theories of institutions (Searle, Anscombe), as well as the semantic notion of truth (Tarski) and Kripke's rule scepticism, are due to a failure to distinguish the difference between rules that are external and rules that are internal in relation to an activity (something which is connected to the distinction between 'philosophical semantics' and 'philosophical grammar'). (Besides, this distinction is closely related to the distiction between assertive and grammatical clauses, which is central in Johansson's study.)
Gudmundur Steingrímsson's dissertation 'Understanding nonsense' also intends to illustrate the questions connected to the notions of language system and language rule. By discussing the concept of a metaphor he points to the problems that surface when one is attempting to give an account of metaphor by reference to the language system.
While the concept of a rule has a legitimate place in connection with linguistic issues, the external interpretation of language rules gives rise to a kind of conceptual reductionism that is in danger of impoverishing our understanding of linguistic phenomena. This means that questions about language are reduced to the dichotomous question of whether a sentence complies or conflicts with a language rule (whether it is intellectual or not, or whether or not it belongs to the language). This standpoint is obviously anchored in the need to develop methods for the teaching of foreign languages (naturally, the language rules that are used in this context are external). But in a context where the question of the command of a language does not arise, the question of 'breaking a rule' has a different character: a speaker could also, for example, try to express herself in an unexpected or peculiar manner, and in this case there are no given limits as to how a language can or ought to be spoken. (Here one could develop the idea of virtue linguistics along the lines of virtue ethics and virtue epistemology. On this viewpoint, cf. Hertzberg, forthcoming.)
Once the notions of language rule and language system are regarded as problematic, it can be asked what objective the attempt to codify a language's grammar can have, especially when this attempt is isolated from the objective of learning a language. These questions form the background to Saara Haapamäki's thought-historical project, which aims at investigating the self-view that is expressed in texts on the grammar of the Swedish language.
Anders Burman's dissertation attempts to illustrate the manifold
ways in which the intentionality of our utterances - what we can and can
not express, what it signifies to 'mean what we say' and the ways in which
way our utterances can be understood - depends on the place of the utterance
in the speaker's life and on the context of human relations in which the
utterance is made. These complicated and intertwined circumstances become
prominent once we extricate ourselves from the attempt to describe the
linguistic reality in terms of external rules. The description of these
circumstances is made not in a metalanguage, but in everyday language,
and it is tied to the endeavour to clarify the place of language in the
human context.
| The Background of the Project and the Research Environment | [to
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The origins of the Project 'Language and Praxis' extend back for several years and are the result of contacts between philosophers in Uppsala and Åbo centring around problems in the philosophy of language. A penetrating critique of the current views of language as a system has been put forward by Sören Stenlund (1990) and by Pär Segerdahl (1996). A related critique has also been expressed, among other things, in some of the essays in Hertzberg 1994. The work done by Stenlund has been an inspiration to several of the project's participants: Olav Gundersen, Martin Gustafsson, Torsten Johansson and Saara Haapamäki. Gundersen's research has also been influenced, above all, by Viggo Rossvaer, Tromsø (Rossvaer 1975) and by Audun Öfsti, Trondheim (Öfsti 1980), particularly because of their standpoint on the knowledge of praxis. Steingrimsson's research is linked to the studies on neologism and the transformation of meaning, conducted by the Icelandic philosopher Thorsteinn Gylfason and linguist Halldor Halldorsson.
In Uppsala the project 'Language and Praxis' - both in terms of topic
and methodology - is in close contact with a project in linguistics and
the philosophy of language, 'Language and Human Action', headed by Professor
Sven Öhman, which from the beginning of 1995 has received funding
from 'Kulturfonden vid Stiftelsen Riksbankens Jubileumsfond'. The Uppsala
project is estimated to continue for four years, and it is planned that
its participants will work in close cooperation with the participants of
'Language and Praxis', by means of joint seminars and the like. It is also
planned that the cooperation will result in joint publications.
| References: | [to
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Hans Aarsleff 1982: From Locke to Saussure. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press.
G. P. Baker & P. M. S. Hacker 1984: Language, Sense and Nonsense. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
D. Davidson 1986: Inquiries into Truth and Intrepretation. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
C. Diamond 1989: 'Rules: Looking in the Right Place.' In D. Z. Phillips and P. Winch (eds), Wittgenstein: Attention to Particulars. Houndmills: Macmillan.
- 1991: The Realistic Spirit. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.
G. Frege 1977: Begriffsschrift. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.
- 1986: Funktion, Begriff, Bedeutung. Göttingen.
- 1987: Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik. Stuttgart: Reclam.
R. Gaita 1991b: 'Language and Conversation.' In A. Phillips Griffiths (ed.), Wittgenstein Centenary Essays. Cambridge University Press.
Th. Gylfason: 'New Words for an Old Language. Diogenes 132.
H. Halldorsson (1971): Thættir um sögulega merkingarfrædi. Reykjavík.
O. Hanfling (1980): 'Does Language Need Rules?' Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 30.
L. Hertzberg 1994: The Limits of Experience, Acta Philosophica Fennica.
- forthcoming: 'The Sense is Where You Find it'.
L. Hertzberg (ed.) 1992: Essäer om Wittgenstein, Thales.
S. Kripke 1984: Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Malcolm, Norman 1989: 'Language Game (2)'. In D. Z. Phillips and P. Winch (eds), Wittgenstein: Attention to Particulars. Houndmills: Macmillan.
- 1992: 'Language without Conversation.' Philosophical Investigations. 15 (1992), 207-214.
R. Rhees 1970: Discussions of Wittgenstein. London: Routledge.
V. Rossvær 1975: Kant og Wittgenstein. Oslo.
P. Segerdahl 1996: Language Use, London: Macmillan.
S. Stenlund 1990: Language and Philosophical Problems, London: Routledge.
C. Taylor 1985: Philosophical Papers 1-2, Cambridge University Press.
P. Winch 1987: 'Facts and Superfacts' in Winch: Trying to Make Sense, Blackwell.
L. Wittgenstein 1958: Philosophische Untersuchungen. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
- 1969: Über Gewissheit. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
A. Öfsti 1980: Transcendentalfilosofi og vitenskapsteori. Oslo.
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