Quick fixes to fix the blame: Dodgy sources to villify the public sector

It seems that when it comes to facts and figures, as far as the government is concerned anything goes. From the beginning of this coalition’s reign, there has been a propaganda campaign which has somehow managed to convince the nation firstly that the national debt is the most significant problem the nation faces, and secondly that the cause of this problem is almost exclusively the public sector and welfare.

How have they managed to achieve this? Well, doubtless in many complex ways, but certainly one of them has been a steady procession of sensationalist headlines (usually from the Daily Mail) citing terrifying amounts of money which the NHS is costing us (bunch of selfish poor people going and getting unwell), that education is costing us (lazy, layabout teachers who would clearly do a far better job if they were working for a profit), that welfare is costing us (scroungers, and probably foreign to boot), and that immigration is costing us (coming in here and nicking all the jobs we don’t want).

The question though, is where do all these sensational statistics and figures come from? Are they just made up?

Well, possibly. If you cast you mind back to the numbers being flagged up in relation to ‘NHS tourism”, the disparities were so ridiculous that you can only imagine somebody was guessing. In case you have forgotten this sorry saga, the story really starts in March 2011, when the then Health Minister announced figures that EU and non-EU residents were costing the NHS a little under £7 million each year.

This year, an official spokesperson for David Cameron announced that these costs were actually between £10m and £20m.

A little later, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt turns up on Radio 4 and claims the cost is actually £200m.

Of course the Daily Mail reported this story as foreigners “bleeding the NHS dry”, but clearly being unimpressed by the degree of scandal this headline caused, the paper went on to claim that the real cost of NHS tourism was “billions”

So who is right? And how in the hell did we manage to get all the way from £7m to “billions” within the space of a week? 

Our old friend Michael Gove has perhaps shed a little light on this. Rather magnificently adding to his growing reputation as somebody who manages to form public policy out of nothing more than random scraps of information and sheer self-confidence, Gove recently went into a full attack on the teaching of history in the UK. This was, of course, an attempt to demonstrate how supremely qualified Gove himself was to re-write the curriculum. So, Gove used the platform of the BBC to launch a full attack on the a lesson plan by designed by highly qualified and experience history teacher Russel Tarr, in which he used Mr. Men cartoons to teach about Hitler. Gove described this as ‘infantile’. Unfortunately for Gove though, he had not actually bothered to find out very much at all about this apparently infantile teacher. Turns out it was not, actually, a lesson about Hitler but about The Weimar Republic 1918-33. Golly Mr. Gove - I thought you were the expert? Certainly since you so proudly declared to the University of Brighton how familiar you are with Richard J. Evans’ book The Third Reich at War, so I might have thought you would have been able to differentiate. Perhaps Gove knows a little less about wartime history than he would like to make out? One thing’s for sure, if he thinks that reading Evans’ book is a more appropriate activity for GCSE-age pupils then he clearly knows even less about teaching.

The ignorance of Gove’s point of attack was rebutted rather comprehensively by Tarr himself, and after a few rather unconvincing attempts to defend his comments, Gove was probably happy to let the issue drop.

Instead, Gove (in his infinite wisdom) decided to try and attack the teaching of grammar - which brought him into a headlong confrontation with a children’s poet laureate sporting 40 years of experience as a writer and champion of children’s literacy. Again, Gove’s tactic was to try and present himself as the expert, and in this case Michael Rosen as a ‘hindrance’ to children’s literacy. There was only going to be one winner in this competition, you can read Michael Rosen’s comprehensive shredding of Gove here.

Of course, after all this we were probably expecting Gove to come out and accuse Sir Chris Hoy of being a bad example to cyclists, or to boldly declare that five-time World’s Strongest Man Mariusz Pudzianowski is a big Polish wimp who he could beat at arm-wrestling any day of the week.

Instead, Gove managed to get himself caught up in a brouhaha after citing various “surveys” as evidence of the historical ignorance of today’s children. Thanks to the efforts of one retired teacher and some heroic blogging from PlashingVole, the truth about the ‘evidence’ Gove was referring to came to light. It turns out that the surveys which Gove uses to base his views on include one from a documentary on UKTV Gold. This survey was not only several years old, but actually not even conducted exclusively on children. Worse still, the survey itself was historically inaccurate. Another of the surveys Gove used was conducted by Premier Inns hotel chain, in order to encourage more tourism, while a third was revealed as having been conducted by a conservative think-tank commissioned by Gove’s own party, and which seems curiously unable to provide any details about the survey itself.

Perhaps now we are beginning to see how such sensational headlines come to exist. If the data doesn’t say what you want it to, then simply change it. If you want to present yourself as an ‘expert’, then all you need is a gargantuan amount of self-confidence, a decent bucket-load of invincible arrogance, and ten minutes on Google (or at least, an office assistant who can spend ten minutes on Google while you practice your smirk).

Fine. If this is how the game is played, let’s see.

I have just spent about 20 minutes on Google, trying to find out some facts and figures which support my own ideologies.

This government (and the Daily Mail) would have us believe that asylum seekers are a social concern. The Mail reported “Asylum seekers are pouring into Britain in record numbers as the immigration system spirals out of control”.

Actually, asylum-seekers make up only 0.3% of the population, and each year an increasing number of those are being held in ‘detention centres’ - including small children.

And if asylum seekers cannot provide the government (and the Daily Mail) with its zenophobic sensationalism, then immigration statistics can. If The Mail does disagree with the government on one thing, it is their softness when it comes to immigration. After all, the country is being flooded with them. Apparently over 200,000 came into the country last year - something we should all be shocked about. Of course, the Mail do also say migration levels have “remained steady” since 2004 - which begs the question of where all this flood can be going? Surely the numbers of migrants should be increasing by 200,000 each year, not remaining “steady”?

Of course, one explanation for this might be that while 200,000 immigrants are coming into the country, between 200,000 and 130,000 are leaving. This does not include the 50,000 Britains currently stealing the jobs of foreigners in other countries, or the 30,000 unemployed freeloaders clogging up the local beaches of the Spanish.

But hey, at least we can whine about the cost of benefits can’t we? After all, all those dandy academics in Universities are costing the economy 4.6bn every year!

Except that according to some ‘surveys’, those same Universities actually contribute 59bn to the economy - which makes them actually a pretty good investment.

Alright then. Let’s look at proportional GDP expenditure. 19% of the country's annual income is spent on the NHS. 17% on welfare, and 14% on education. This is simply unsustainable, surely?

Well, yes. Let’s not forget though, that education contributes to the economy as well. And as for health, we would need to balance the costs of each against the economic benefits. Sickness can, according to some sources, cost 6.5bn to the economy in terms of lost work. The less effective the NHS, the higher those costs will rise. Similarly, education is directly linked to GDP growth, so offers a clear return on any investment.

As for welfare, well it is welfare which enables people with disabilities or people with children to actually work, and contribute to the economy as well as to reduce the unemployment rates. More importantly though, welfare itself might need some re-definition here. When people talk about welfare, they use the term in relation to poor people who end up being supported by the state. However, these costs are nothing compared to the amount of money we spend supporting extremely rich people to... well, keep being extremely rich.

The current national deficit stands at around £111bn, and the propaganda would have us believe this is the fault of public spending and welfare. However, some sources have estimated that over the last few years the government has spent around £1.5 trillion bailing out banks and the financial sector.

Kind of makes child tax credits look like lose change, doesn’t it?

But if you think that’s bad, every year the economy loses an estimated £69.9 billion to big corporations and millionaires who dodge paying their taxes.

Now that makes benefit cheats looks utterly inconsequential by comparison.

I am not suggesting that any of the numbers or statistics I have used are infallibly correct. However, they are no more questionable than sources which Michael Gove seems to rely on, and perhaps more accountable than those which Jeremy Hunt and David Cameron have used. There is almost certainly no single, definitive truth about the economy out there.

However, right now we seem to be under a hailstorm of propaganda trying to convince us that there is, and that the truth is - it all because of poor people, foreigners and those damned wretched teachers.

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~ Thursday, 16 May 2013 0 comments

Why do students not read information about assessments?

There is a point in each semester - always the same point - where I seem to be suddenly hit by a sense of hopelessness.  Ok, that is maybe exaggerating a little - but there are things which tend to happen in the final third of a module which are depressingly predictable, and which seem to happen to many of the lecturers I have talked to.

One thing that happens, is that you suddenly notice that attendance has dropped.  I happens a little subtly at first, but one morning you are completing your registers and suddenly notice a number of students have been missing for the last couple of weeks.  Part of the reason for this might be explained by the increasingly potent fear of assessment: That moment when students realise that the hand-in date is real, and actually going to happen, can often provoke a strange reaction.  Sometimes, the reaction means that they stop coming to class so that they can 'work on their essays'.  Sometimes though, it is almost as if they stop coming to class out of some strange fear which leads them to believe that the deadline might not actually happen if they are not here to witness it's approach.

Of course it might be that they have simply become bored by your subject, or by your teaching - a possibility I am perfectly willing to accept.  However, talking to other lecturers I realise that I am not the only one who experiences this - and we can't all be boring, can we...?

There is a legitimate question about the extent to which attendance should really matter to us.  After all, independent learning is all about students being able to manage their own learning process.  Isn't it?  Hmm.  Yes, but there are other factors to consider - not least our responsibility as teachers and institutions to actually provide the kind of support students are paying a lot of money for.  You can read about this issue more here.

Another problem I tend to encounter at this stage of the semester though, is to do with that very support.

This is the stage in the semester when I seem to be filling every spare moment of each day in tutorials with students.  It is therefore the stage at which, despite all of their initial enthusiasms, many of my dissertation students are realising that they did not do enough work on their thesis during the first term.  It is also the stage at which I meet with students who admit to having done no work on their assignments yet, because they have not understood the task.

Now both of these are serious issues about which I as a lecturer should feel some sense of responsibility.  I know, for example, that stressing the need to structure their research in the first semester is essential for dissertation students.  I know as well, that clarity about assessment is essential to avoid unnecessary anxiety for students.

Trouble is, clearly whatever I do to emphasise these things is simply not working.  It is not possible for me to meet individually with every single student to explain these things, so I have resorted to providing stacks of resources and information instead: My dissertation students have pages of online guides, exercises, videos and resources to help them get started.  My course guides tend to include guidance on the assessment which can stretch to many pages - explaining what they need to do, and how they can do it.

And yet...

...Too often when I meet with a student and they tell me they do not understand the assessment, I ask the same question: "Have you read the guidance in the course guide?"  You can, doubtless, anticipate the common response.

"No".

Too often when I meet with a dissertation student and they tell me they do not know how to get started, I ask the same question: "Have you looked at the material on the course page?"

"No". 

Actually, post-assessment tutorials can follow the same pattern.  Too often, a student tells me that they do not understand why they have failed, and I ask the same question: "Have you read the feedback?"

"No". 

It would be very easy to say that this is the student's own fault.  The information is there for them, and they have not used it.  It is not a case that the information is confusing, or unclear - just that they have not read it, watched it, participated in it.

The problem is, the very fact that these students have arranged these tutorials with me, demonstrates that they do care.  So the question is, if they do care, why have they not read the information available to them?  I have never really had a clear answer to this question.  When I ask students, they tend to give a rather shifty and embarrassed shrug but seem to have no clear answer at all.  I can sympathise, because it is hard to ask this question without sounding accusatory, and that immediately limits the possibility of an honest answer.  I cannot get over the feeling though, that if I could find the answer to this question I might be able to find a way of providing essential information more effectively.

Why do students not use the information available to them?  Is it because of the way the information is presented?  Is there some mechanism which could help those students to deal with that information at an earlier stage?  Or is this simply something which is the student's own responsibility, and the extent of my own obligations must necessarily end at some point?

If anyone has any ideas, I would really love to know them!

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~ Wednesday, 15 May 2013 0 comments

The origins of language: Language Acquisition

The question of the origins of language has two parts, which do not easily connect to each other.

1. On the one hand, the question is one which relates to human development – the natural history of language. How does language start? Where does it come from? We have already seen that human language is totally unique from the animal kingdom. How did this happen?

2. On the other hand the question is one which deals with the cultural history of known languages. We speak English – but where did English come from? How did all the languages in world evolve, and is there such a thing as a ‘first’ language?

In this entry, I will only be looking at the first part of this question.

A Universal Grammar?

When attempting to address question 1, the traditional arguments have always assumed that the development of language in human beings is all to do with cultural evolution and cognitive development. We learn language when we are children because we are surrounded by language, and it develops because children have a natural instinct to imitate.

This traditional view has, within the last fifty years, been almost eclipsed by a new theory which was most significantly developed by the linguist Noam Chomsky in the 1950s. Chomsky recognised (as we have done) that one of the key things which distinguish human language from animal language is the grammatical structures which it uses to expand the basis of lexical meaning – but he recognised, as well, that these grammatical structures are used instinctively, more than as part of a cognitive process of learning acquisition.

For example, consider the following sentence (these examples have been ruthlessly nicked from Prof. John McWhorter):

This sentence can be re-phrased by placing the ‘what’ at the beginning instead of at the end, and it will still make the same amount of sense:

By contrast, consider the following sentence:

This sentence makes sense, and ends with the word ‘what’. Unlike the previous example, though, we cannot place the ‘what’ at the beginning of the sentence and maintain the sense of the sentence itself:

This new sentence makes no sense. We know this, can recognise it, and can incorporate the grammatical understanding into the ways in which we use language – but can you explain the grammatical rules which are at work and which explain why we cannot treat the two sentences in the same way?

You could try - but it is certainly a complex thing to explain. Indeed the more you might think about it, the more you might realise that your ability to make sense of language is really rather puzzling.  You might start to realise that there are many aspects of language - particularly in terms of grammar - which you have never really understood, but which you exploit with an extraordinary deftness in your everyday conversations.

How can we explain the ease with which we master something as complex as language and grammar?

Well, the conclusion which Noam Chomsky reached in relation to this question, was that human beings must be somehow pre-disposed, or genetically programmed, to acquire these rules.  He has frequently offered this illustration:

Imagine that an alien came to Earth and observed the way we humans communicate with each other. According to Chomsky, this alien would perceive all languages on Earth as pretty much the same, with only superficial variations distinguishing, for example, English from Chinese. (Allen, 2000) 

The complexities of grammar, then, is a feature of our species - like long necks are a feature of giraffes.  But what evidence is there for the idea that language originates in anything more than social interaction?  After all, for many years it has been assumed that we learn language simply because we are surrounded by language.

Six arguments against language being learned solely through interaction

There are, of course, many arguments we could make, and perhaps the most eloquent expression of those is Steven Pinker's fantastic book The Language Instinct.  Here though, we are going to consider just six that have been highlighted again by McWhorter.

1) The speed of acquisition

 

Children learn language fast. When we consider the difficulties of learning a new language when we are adults, it seems incredible that children are able to learn something so complex with such seeming effortlessness. Can this really be explained solely by saying the children learn by listening to adults around them?

2) All human societies use language

This effortless acquisition of knowledge is not dependent on anything. It is not just exceptionally bright Oxbridge graduates that learn language.  Indeed, those with no education at all can still be an expert at it.  And that expertise is gained within the first few years of their life.  All children, of whatever ability, manage to learn language. Unlike academic ability, sporting ability, or the ability to play the piano; the ability to learn language is not something which varies from individual to individual.

Neither does it vary from culture to culture.  Different societies throughout the world vary from each other in almost every conceivable way.  There are variations in how communities dress, act, eat, drink, sleep, worship, hunt, grow old, etc., etc..  However there is one thing that all human societies have in common: They all have language.  If language was something which was cultural, surely there would be some place, hidden away in some corner of the world, where language was simply not something which they did – where they used hand gestures instead? 

3) The Critical Age Hypothesis

 

Real life examples of ducklings imprinting on a human

This theory suggests that the ability to learn language erodes as we get older. You may know of a family with a small child who has moved to a new country. The child may already speak one language, but they will pick up the language of the new country much more quickly that the adults do, and will learn to speak it usually without a trace of an accent. In contrast, children who arrive into a new country and a new language in their early to mid-teens will certainly master the language almost perfectly. Full adults, when making a change into a new country and a new language, often never master the new language at all. Even if they do achieve something like fluency, they will almost always carry a strong accent.

Actually, this critical age hypothesis can be verified by looking at the animal kingdom – where such stages of generically programmed acquisition can be seen at work already. A duckling, for example, when it is hatched, is likely to ‘imprint’ upon the first thing it sees. You've all seen the cartoons?  Well, the cartoons are in this instance quite right.  This was demonstrated by Austrian ethologist Konrad Lorenz, as you can see in this video:

If you put on a hand puppet of a bird, then when the duckling hatches it will see the puppet and adopt it as its mother. However, an adult duck would never imprint in this way. You could not ‘imprint’ upon an adult bird in the way that you can with a baby bird. This most probably means that the baby bird is genetically programmed to acquire certain knowledge from birth – but that by the time the bird matures that acquisitional ability has disappeared.

Part of the problem with proving the critical age hypothesis in relation to humans, is that the only way you could reliably test it would be to deprive a child of all language-acquisition stimuli until they had past the stage of maturation. This, as you can imagine, would not be allowed for the purposes of research on the basis of ethics if not sheer humanity. However, occasionally history has unfortunately thrown up brief opportunities of observing just such conditions.

One such occasion was Genie.  Genie was a girl who was discovered by social services in America at the age of 13. For the first 13 years of her life she had been imprisoned in a basement, in circumstances which were so shocking and upsetting that they were national news. After she was rescued, she was given intensive tutoring and support to attempt to recover, but she never really learned to speak properly. The words were there, but the grammatical structures were simply never acquired.

4) The Poverty of the Stimulus

This argument is designed to contest the idea that children learn language simply by listening to those adults around them. It does so by arguing that although adults can be capable of constructing sophisticated sentences in formal environments and in writing, they rarely do so in everyday conversations. Generally, people do not construct sentences in conversation which demonstrates an effective use of grammatical or syntactical construction.

Or, to put it another way, we 'don't speak proper'.

For example, this transcript is one I found on the internet (not sure of the reference, so just follow the link for the source) showing a conversation between a plumber and a teacher:

P: it’s goin (.) there
T: yeah (.) yep
P: obviously you’re goin to have to keep that there (2) keep the timber because of the
T: that was left by the last people that had the house
P: it’s a stereo unit (.) innit
T: (Laughs) looks like it (.) yes
P: I’ve seen some things (.) but eh (.) I see (3) don’t see any problems there (.) em (.) have you got taps & everything with it or are you putting these on
T: [yes (.) taps (.)
That’s the main reason I’m having it replaced ( indecipherable utterance)
P: no (.) once they go they go there’s not a lot you can do about it (.) right (.) you’re looking
at (2) roughly a mornings work (.) eh. (.) bit of pipe.. it’d be say (.) won’t cost you more than
(3) 45 quid (.) that’s fitted
T: mhm...
P: I suppose you want it done straight away
T: yeh (.) soonish (.) I’m a teacher so it’s easier to get it done just now when I’m around than
P: where d’you teach?
T: Ferndown
P: oh yeh (.) me wife teaches at um Heatherlands down there
T: I mean I’m here next week (.) until the 23rd
P: umm I think I could fit you in Saturday morning (2) that be any good
T: that’d be great
P: right if we make it Saturday morning (2) if there’s any alteration (.) what (.) what it is I’m going up to Basingstoke (.) tomorrow um I don’t know what how long I’m going to be there but hopefully it’ll be just the day and then I’ll let you know and go on from there if I don’t phone you fine Saturday morning (1) if if eh
T: what kind of time would you be here Saturday morning
P: eh I spose you want a lay in
T: no I don’t mind (.)
P: [oh
T: I just want to know
P: half nine ten o’clock (.) turning your water off is (.) it’s all up there is it?
T: yes (.) it’s just at the front
P: yeh no problem it all turns off (.) that’s what I’m saying
T: yeh
P: OK that’s lovely

Transcription code:
[simultaneous utterance
(2) 2 second pause (.) short pause

This is a normal use of language for informal conversation. You are, perhaps, able to imagine this conversation and are thinking 'yup, that's how people speak'.  However, when we see it written down it is clear that it is ‘bad English’.

Here's the point.  If this is the stimulus through which children learn to acquire language, then how has any idea of grammatical or syntactical structure been able to develop at all? How, according to the stimulus we received when learning language, did we learn to recognise that while ‘what did you do’ is grammatically correct, ‘what who do you think will say’ is not? How can children acquire such a sophisticated grasp of grammar, simply by listening to people speak ungrammatically?

The idea of the Poverty of the Stimulus has been criticised in recent times.  Cognitive scientists have argued, for example, that adults tend to modify language when talking to children, and speak more 'correctly' than they might otherwise.  Chomsky himself has tended to view such oppositions with exasperation though.  You can read an article in which Chomsky defends the Poverty of the Stimulus argument here.  What do you think?

5) Brainstuff

It has been discovered that there are certain areas of the human brain which appear to have been pre-programmed for processing language. Broca’s area has been found to affect the ways in which we control grammar and syntax. Where we find individuals who have experienced some kind of brain damage in this area, their language changes to the extent that although words are understood, and their meaning is clear, they are not constructed into any proper sentences.

Wernicke’s area, a little below Broca’s area, seems to control our capacity for comprehension, and construction of meaning in language. Were people suffer from damage to this area they will tend to speak in sentences which make grammatical sense, but in all other ways appear to be nonsense.

We can see the effects of damage to these different areas by looking at recordings of interviews with people who have aphasia or either Broca’s or Wrernicke’s area.

An example of someone demonstrating symptoms of Broca's Aphasia

An example of someone demonstrating symptoms of Wernicke's Aphasia

The sense of frustration in the participants is frequently clear. What is also clear, is that if there are parts of the human brain specifically set aside for controlling language function, it is difficult to argue that language is merely a process learned through socialisation.

6) The FOXP2 Gene

Finally, in more recent years scientists have discovered the FOXP2 gene – a gene which appears to impact upon our capacity to use language, and which weakens as we move from childhood into maturity. Evidence has been accumulating for the significance of this gene in the production of language, and there have been studies (like those by Myrna Gopnik) which have shown that where families exhibit a deficit in this gene, hereditary language problems tend to follow.

You can read more about this gene, and the research which has been conducted on it, here.

In conclusion

Chomsky’s theories of a 'inate' disposition for language are not uncontested. The most eloquent argument in favour of it has been Steven Pinker’s bestselling The Language Instinct (1994).

It is always worth, though, exploring alternative arguments. One of the most eloquent argument which considers alternative theories – the match, if you like, for Pinker’s book – is Geoffrey Sampson’s The ‘Language Instinct’ Debate (2003).

Bibliography

• Finch, G. (2001). How to Study Linguistics, 2nd edn.. Basingstoke: Palgrave.

• Finch, G. (2003). Word of Mouth: A New Introduction to Language and Communication. Basingstoke: Palgrave.

• Cook, V. and Newson, M. (2007). Chomsky’s Universal Grammar: An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell

• Pinker, S. (1994). The Language Instinct. London: Penguin

• Gopnik, M. (1999). Familial Language Impairment: More English Evidence. Folia Phoniatr Logop, (51:1-2). Pp. 5 - 19

• Sampson, G. (2005) The ‘Language Instinct’ Debate. Continuum International Publishing Group.

• Allen, S.R. (2010) Chomsky’s Other Revolution [Internet]. Available from: [Accessed 13 May 2013]

• Lateralisation of Language [Internet]. Available from: [Accessed 13 May 2013]

• McWhorter, J. (2004) Exploring the English language. Available from: [Accessed 6 March 2013]

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~ Monday, 13 May 2013 0 comments

Pragmatics and Grice's Cooperative Principal

We have so far considered how words are formed and classified, and how words are grouped to form phrases. We have considered as well how words are formed vocally through the manner and place of articulation. We have even explored the murky realms of semantics to consider the difficult issue of how all these factors combined to make a language capable of communicating meaning.

In our last entry in this series, we considered several facets of semantics, and touched briefly on the figure of Ferdinand de Saussure. Saussure recognised that language works in a variety of different ways, and is principally known for his analysis of the linguistic sign:

The other thing Saussure has become known for, is for his identification of two central branches of language – those of langue and parole. Langue refers to the systems of language, like the linguistic sign, morphemes, phonemes, grammar, etc.. Langue means the system of rules by which language works. Parole, on the other hand, refers to language in use – it is the actual speech acts, and manifestations of language in practical, concrete circumstances.

Initially, Saussure was more interested in the systems of language than in speech act theories – which were necessarily more flexible because they were so dependent on the behaviours of social human beings. However, many theorists since Saussure (like M. M. Bakhtin and J. R. Searle) have been far more interested in this point of language in use.

It is this idea of parole or language in use, which we are going to be considering here, and the theorist we are going to use for this exploration is Paul Grice.

The problem is that when we talk about systems of language (langue), we tend to assume that all that is needed in order to be able to communicate effectively is to ensure that people are jointly aware of those systems. For example, in terms of the linguistic sign Saussure used the example of a ‘tree’. Here, the signifier is the word itself – ‘tree’. What is being signified by the word though, is the idea of a tree itself:

The sign itself is used to point to a referent which is real and specific. For example, consider the sentence:

The tree in my back garden

Here, the sign ‘tree’ works exactly as we seen above. However, the sign itself is being used to point to a specific object (the referent) which can be clearly identified because it shares the same qualities as the signified in the sign:

The signified has to be generic. The signified is not a particular tree, but the idea of tree-ness. There are, though, enough similarities between this idea of tree-ness, and the object in my back garden, for me to be able to know that when you say ‘the tree in my back garden’ you mean the thing with a brown trunk, branches and leaves, and not the dustbin in the corner.

This idea of tree-ness is doubtless going to be different for each individual. When I say the word ‘tree’, an idea of a picture of a tree will pop up in your mind – but that picture is always going to be unique to you. The person sat next to you will have a slightly different picture of a tree in their mind:

However, as we have already seen with our exercise in drawing a car, although the image of the signified in our minds differs from person to person, there are always going to be generic similarities between them. This means that when somebody points to an object and says ‘look at that tree’, you do not need to have exactly the same picture of a tree in your mind to be able to match your image against the reality being described:

This is all well and good for proper nouns (nouns which refer to specific, concrete realities). However, what happens when we attempt to use the same mechanism for understanding abstract nouns (nouns where refer to abstract concepts). For example, consider the word ‘culture’. We know that the word ‘culture’ is the signifier, but what is the signified?

If we consider some of the ways in which the word ‘culture’ is used, we might begin to see some of the difficulties in identifying any particular system of langue which can effectively define it.

Consider each of the following sentences.  How would you define the meaning of the word ‘culture’ in each one?

“There are enormous cultural differences between Asia and America”

“She is such a cultured person”

“Pop music is often used by sub-cultures to assert their identity”

“There is a danger that mass culture may destroy the values of society”

“This module will examine eighteenth-century literary culture”

“This is an interesting cultural artefact”

“Disneyland fosters a distinctive culture based on certain values”

The truth is, the systems of langue only go so far to explaining how communication takes place. We explored some of these briefly last week when we discussed pragmatics, but we can see again here the importance of different contexts.

Consider the sentence:

Dogs must be carried

This sentence contains signs which are relatively straightforward. However, it can mean different things depending on the context in which it is made. For example, if you were to see this written on a sign next to an escalator, how would you interpret it? Would you assume that you are not allowed to travel on the escalator unless you are carrying a dog?

Unlikely.

However, consider this alternative sentence:

Passports must be carried

If you were to see this sentence on a sign in an airport, would you interpret it any differently to the sentence about carrying dogs? If so, why? The structure of the sentence remains the same. The only thing that changes is the contexts.

If so far we have suggested that systems of language create problems, then the trouble is that parole does not necessarily make life any simpler because language in use is effected by more than simply the geography of the utterance. After all, as Geoffrey Finch says:

We also convey meaning through our bodies, by gesture, posture, and looks, that is, by non-verbal communication, and through our voices, by intonation and rhythm. All of these can have paralinguistic functions, in other words, they can run alongside the words contributing to the total meaning of the communication, either by reinforcing the word meaning of the communication, or, sometimes, contradicting (Finch, 2003. p. 38)

These paralinguistic functions are an accepted part of normal communication, and in fact communication would be very difficult without them.

To communicate the sentence ‘I want to talk to you’ in such a way as to imply that you are cross or angry with the person you are talking to, you would adopt an appropriate tone and appropriate body language:

However, to communicate ‘I want to talk to you’ in such a way as to imply that you are attracted to them and want to ask them on a date, you would apply a very different tone and body posture:

Get these logical structures the wrong way around, and communication breaks down (not to mention your relationships!). Again, Geoffrey Finch puts this nicely:

In order to comprehend what is said to us, then, we need to understand more than the literal sense of an utterance. We need to understand its force … The force of an utterance is the meaning it has in a particular situational setting or social context … One of the ways in which we interpret the force of utterance is by paying attention to // the intonation pattern of speakers. It’s often the case that we object to the manner in which something is said rather than just what is said (Finch, 2003. pp. 55-6).

Finch illustrates a simple sentence, the meaning of which can be easily changed through the force of its utterance:

I can’t drive there

If we change the stress of this sentence, we can change the implied meaning. For example:

I can’t drive there: Here, the emphasis on the word ‘I’ implies that although the speaker may not be able to driver there, somebody else might.

I can’t drive there: Here, the stress on ‘can’t’ makes the statement itself adamant. There is simply no way I will be able to drive there.

I can’t drive there: Here, the stress on ‘drive’ suggests that although driving might be out of the question, it might be possible to walk or go by public transport.

I can’t drive there: Here, the stress on ‘there’ implies that although it is out of the question to go to this particular place, they might be willing to go to another place instead.

Language, then, is composed of many different systems all working, or relating together – whether they be systems of sound (phonetics) or words (grammar) or meaning (semiotics), and whether they be linguistic or paralinguistic. The fact that there are so many openings for miscommunication throughout each of them is what is known as linguistic indeterminacy. It is something that, as linguists, you are going to have to get used to – just as Saussure did.

In fact, there are so many ways in which language could be crucially (even tragically) misinterpreted that Paul Grice began to realise that cooperation between linguistic participants is one of the most essential factors in any effective system of language. Whenever we engage in a conversation with somebody, we make an unspoken agreement to accord by the rules of a set of systems and to accommodate the patterns of language of the other participant.

Think about these questions:

Do you sometimes find that you modify your language to fit in better with those around you?  For example, do you speak more ‘properly’ in class than you do with your friends?

Have you ever modified the way you speak in order to emphasise difference from those around you?  For example, when you were younger did you ever speak in a way more like your friends and less like your parents deliberately to show you parents that you were independent of them?

 
If you answered ‘yes’ to either of these questions, then what you are recognising is the principal of accommodation, by which two speakers in language cooperate by modifying their language to increase the common basis for understanding. This, essentially, is the central principal of Grice’s theory – which Grice himself defines as this:

Make your contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged (Grice, 1991. p. 26)

In other words, fit your language to the requirements of its contexts: Do not say more than you need, or less than is necessary; make sure what you say is relevant to conversation, and delivered in a way most likely to be understood by the other conversational participant; and only say what you believe to be true.

Grice broke this principal down into four maxims: The maxim of quantity, the maxim of relation, the maxim of manner and the maxim of quality.

The Maxim of Quantity:

As you can probably deduce from the name of this maxim, it has to do with the amount of information which is appropriate to any conversational exchange. For example, imagine you ask somebody:

You: Do you have any family?

They could answer by saying ‘yes’, and finish there. If they did this, however, you would surely feel as though the answer was inadequate to the question. In terms of formal logic (the purely logical deconstruction of the meaning of the words, as presented in that particular order), the answer ‘yes’ is an entirely fair one – but there is something more at work. There is a natural logic or a convention – a sub-textual or cultural understanding – which if understood informs us that the question is asking for more details.

This natural logic is, despite its name, not natural at all. Children are notoriously bad at recognising the conventions which require a certain amount of information. A grandparent who rarely sees their grandchild might ask them:

Grandparent: How is school?

To which the grandchild might answer ‘s'alright’, and then go off to play a computer game. The grandchild does not recognise or appreciate that the question is not requesting a positive or negative response, but is the consequence of a desire to engage in the day-to-day experiences of the grandchild as an expression of the love of the grandparent.

Equally though, a conversation can provide too much information. If you imagine somebody working on the tills in a supermarket, they may well ask a customer:

Cashier: How are you today?

The likelihood is that your question is merely a formal one which is made in order to be polite and welcoming to the customer. However, the customer may respond:

Customer:  Actually my bunions have been playing up, and my cousin had a blazing row with his girlfriend last night, so she comes round to my house crying, and he calls demanding to know if she’s there, and it was all bit chaotic and stressful.  On the plus side though, I won twenty quid on the lottery and we got a letter from the management the other day saying we were all getting a 2% pay rise.  I says to my friend Jane, ‘2% isn’t much, but at least its not a deduction – should be enough for a drink or two, eh?’

In this circumstance, too much information has been given. The contexts of the conversation determine that only a limited about of information is required for the sake of politeness.

Both too much information and too little information can be symptoms of a limited linguistic competence – perhaps because of age, or perhaps because of differences in cultures where such competencies differ. However, the maxim of quantity can as well be flouted for deliberate effect:

• Too much information can be a deliberate ploy to avoid addressing an issue which is more problematic. Politicians commonly do this in television interviews – where an awkward question is raised, they spend an inordinate amount of time answering some minor detail of it in the hope that time will run out before they are forced to address the main issue.

• Too little information can be a deliberate statement about the relationship between conversational participants. ‘I know you want more information, but frankly I do not want to talk to you’.

In either case, the maxim of quantity forms the basic principal on which communication takes place – and as such if Grice’s first maxim in his cooperative principal.

The Maxim of Relation

This maxim recognises that there is an implicit agreement between conversational participants to make their utterances relevant to the contexts and to the conversation itself. As one conversational participant is talking, we may be forming in our minds how we might respond to their utterance in a way which is relevant to it:

Participant 1: I had a terrible flu the other week.

Participant 2: Yes, I had a friend who had the flu last week too. Must be something going around.

If you were participant 1, and participant 2 responded to your statement with:

Participant 2: Arsenal won at the weekend.

Then you would doubtless think that something strange was happening. In fact, so sure are we that participants in a conversational exchange will ensure their contributions are relevant, even if participant 2 did respond with ‘Arsenal won at the weekend’, we would be more likely to assume there must be some hidden connection between your flu and the football result.

Participant 1: I had a terrible flu the other week.

Participant 2: Arsenal won at the weekend.

Participant 1: Yeah, they did. And you’re right – things do get better in the end.

Again, this maxim can be flouted (deviated from deliberately). It can be used as a strategy of avoidance:

Participant 1: Did you drink my tea?

Participant 2: I’m just popping out to the shed – back in a moment.

It can also be flouted for comic effect – as in this example from Finch (2003):

Lecturer: You should have been here this morning.

Student: Why? What happened?

The lecturer’s statement can be taken as either an exclamation (‘Wow! You should have been here this morning! You’d never believe what happened!’) or as a reproof (‘You were supposed to be here this morning. What is your excuse?’). The contexts tell us which is the correct interpretation – but here the student has deliberately chosen to interpret it wrongly in order to avoid having to answer the more pertinent question.

The Maxim of Manner

Imagine you are asking somebody for directions. You would expect the person giving those directions to organise them in a sequential order:

Example 1:

• First, you go to the roundabout and take the third exit.

• Then, you will come to a set of traffic lights. Take a left there.

• Then, take the third turning on the right, and head round the corner.

• Your destination is opposite the pub you will see just ahead of you.

What you would not expect, is something more like:

Example 2:

• There is a pub and your destination is opposite it.

• Before that you need to turn right at the traffic lights.

• There is a corner – follow it round.

• It’s third exit on the roundabout

• Third turning on the right.

In the case of example 2, you would be very unlikely to reach your destination, because the information has not been given to you in the correct order. The mixed-up order means that you will almost certainly misunderstand the communication – probably by taking the third turning on the right after the roundabout instead of after the traffic lights.

Consider the following two sentences, and notice how in terms of clause structure the meaning is changed radically if the order is not maintained:

• Laura ran up to the top floor and jumped.

• Laura jumped and ran up to the top floor.

Most conversations do not rely so rigidly to a specific order, but there is always somehow a sense that an order underpins any conversational exchange, and that we follow that order in order to make our contribution as clearly comprehensible as possible. When we are recounting how our day has gone, we tend to do so in a chronological order. When responding to a question about what we have been up to, we tend to list things in a categorical order. For example:

Participant 1: Did you like the film?

Participant 2: I liked some things. The acting was very good, and the scenery was amazing. Thought the plot was a bit thin though.

In this instance, participant 2’s response of ‘I liked some things’ implies (by natural logic rather than formal logic) that there are certain things that they liked and certain things that they did not like. They then proceed to describe those things in a categorical and ordered fashion.

As with all the other maxims, the maxim of manner can be flouted. The violation of this maxim communicates something. A certain disorderliness of conversation is often a symptom of emotional distress or anger, and as the cartoon above indicates some artists have used it as a means of challenging the preconceptions of order which underpin our view of the world. In a strange way, these violations only serve to emphasise more strongly just how central the idea of order is to the ways in which we use language.

The Maxim of Quality

It is always assumed that when we engage in a language exchange then what we are communicating is what we believe to be true. There is no obvious purpose in asking the question ‘what did you think of the film?’ if you have no expectation that the other participant is going to tell the truth.

All conversation is based on the initial premise that participants cooperative in ensuring their contributions are true. A conversation which is composed of a succession on non-truths is entirely un-productive and fails to communicate anything.

For example, consider the following conversation:

Participant 1: Did you see the Harry Potter film?

Participant 2: Yes.

Participant 1: Who was your favourite character?

Participant 2: Luke Skywalker.

Participant 1: What was your favourite bit?

Participant 2: When he rubbed the lamp and the genie appeared.

Participant 1: Oh. My favourite bit was when the dinosaur jumped in at the end and ate the bad guy.

The conversation itself serves no purpose. If the purpose of language is to communicate meaning, then the fact that the maxim of quality has here been flouted means that it has failed in that purpose.

Actually, there is a problem here. We have already seen that all of the maxims can be flouted for deliberate or specific effect, but of all maxims this one is perhaps the most consistently flouted in everyday use. To flout the maxim of quality is to lie, and this is something we do all the time, whether for good reasons or for bad.

Imagine you have arrived in College and have met with a number of students. You have been asked the following questions:

• Did you have a good weekend?

• How are you today?

• I bought this new dress at the weekend – do you think I look ok in it?

• Oo! You have a Wispa bar! Do you mind if I have a bite?

If you are brutally honest, what are the chances that your responses to these questions are going to be entirely honest? Even if you were the one asking if you looked ok in your new dress, you may well be asking the question because you want re-enforcement or encouragement – not because you want to be confronted with a cold hard reality.

To flout the maxim of quantity in relation to these questions is not to render language abortive. It is to fulfil some other maxim in which determines that ‘white lies’ are a necessary expectation in any cooperative communication. This other maxim has been labelled by Geoffrey Leech the maxim of politeness (1983) – the function of which Finch describes well:

The politeness principal enjoins people to be tactful and polite unless there is a specific reason not to be (2003, p. 63).

Bibliography:

• Finch, G. (2001). How to Study Linguistics, 2nd edn.. Basingstoke: Palgrave.

• Finch, G. (2003). Word of Mouth: A New Introduction to Language and Communication. Basingstoke: Palgrave.

• Grice, H. P. (1975) Logic and Conversation. In; Cole, P. and Morgan, J. L., eds., Syntax and Semantics, Vol III. New York: Academic Press, pp. 41-58.

• Grice, H. P. (1978) Further Notes on Logic and Conversation. In; Cole, P., ed., Syntax and Semantics, Vol IX. New York: Academic Press, pp. 113-127.

• Grice, P. (1991). Studies in the Way of Words. Harvard: Harvard

• Leech, G. (1983). Principles of Pragmatics. London: Longman.

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~ Tuesday, 7 May 2013 0 comments

Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

So far in this series on the basis of linguistics, we have considered how words are constructed of morphemes, and how words are classified, and form groups known as phrases. We have, as well, considered how language is created through the human vocal apparatus. We have explored how phonemes are created through the place and manner of articulation.

What we have not yet considered, though, is the complex issue of meaning – and meaning is the purview of semantics, together with its fellow pragmatics. This is an area which is huge, complex and many-layered – and for this reason we will not be exploring it in any great depth here. Our purpose is more to understand what is meant by semantics, and what are some of the problems associated with meaning in language?

What are semantics and pragmatics?

Semantics is the study of the meaning of linguistic expressions. William Ladusaw writes:

Questions of 'semantics' are an important part of the study of linguistic structure. They encompass several different investigations: how each language provides words and idioms for fundamental concepts and ideas (lexical semantics), how the parts of a sentence are integrated into the basis for understanding its meaning (compositional semantics), and how our assessment of what someone means on a particular occasion depends not only on what is actually said but also on aspects of the context of its saying and an assessment of the information and beliefs we share with the speaker (n.d.).

To summarise, semantics includes the study of:

• How language creates words and how words create meaning (lexical semantics);

• How meaning is created through sentence structure and grammar (compositional semantics);

• How meaning is shaped by the context in which language is used (pragmatics).

Ferdinand de Saussure was one of the first – and arguably the most significant – of thinkers to begin to shape a specifically modernist view of language function. Traditionally (and this view is still probably the most common acceptance of how language actually functions) language has been considered a simple relationship between an object, and a word which is used to identify it.

For example, we have a small, cute furry object:

And a word which is attached to that object:

‘CAT’

But actually, Saussure noted, it is not that simple. Words, we know, are composed of phonemes which go to make up the sound-elements of the word. But these sound elements relate to the physical movements of the mouth, tongue and throat as those words are formed orally. They do not explain that the word itself has distinctive associations for particular groups of people. As such, linguistics only goes so far as to describe the word-sound – but this does not explain how the word works in communicating meaning. Such sound-elements as phonemes are not present in words which are not articulated: words which are written down or (more significantly) words which are mentally rather than orally framed. Similarly, such a word can only communicate meaning if there are shared sets of assumptions from the community of people who use it.

In other words, the word ‘cat’ can only mean ‘small furry feline’ if a group of people have already agreed that this is what the word means. If I pointed at a small furry feline and began to exclaim ‘woogerdongo!’, it would make sense to nobody. I may have decided myself that ‘woogerdongo’ was a new word meaning small furry feline – but unless everyone else knows this too, it communicates no meaning.

So for Saussure, words themselves are more usefully thought of not as isolated systems, but as signs which communicate meaning by pointing towards it through interaction and shared assumptions among groups of people. These signs are composed of two parts: the signifier and the signified. The signifier is the vehicle of the sign – the word itself. The signified is the concept being pointed to by the signifier.

Using out example above, ‘cat’ acts as the signifier. It points to the concept – a small furry feline:

A linguistic sign, then, contains both the word itself and the concept which the word is pointing to. When somebody is giving directions and they say ‘take a left at the cat’, both the person giving the instructions and the person receiving the instructions share the understanding of what the sign ‘cat’ means. Both possess a mental image of a small feline which is automatically associated with the signifier ‘cat’.

The sign works because the signifier and the signified operate together. We as a group share the associations, and this makes the sign effective. If none of you spoke English, or knew what a car was, you could certainly define the word in terms of its sound patterns – but the word itself would communicate no meaning. Language communicates meaning through signs.

Hence semiotics – or, as Saussure preferred to call it, semiology – from the Greek semeion, meaning ‘sign’.

For example, take a look at these three signs:

Now answer this question:

You will probably find that your answers do not differ significantly from the answers of anybody else, because the idea of what is being signified is something which you all share.

In each of those three examples then, we can see that the symbol works equally as well as a word might as signifiers. Indeed, many languages are written in symbols rather than words (hieroglyphics):

Words can create meaning because they signify external objects, ideas or realities which we have learned to associate with them. However, this is not the only way in which meaning is created. As Geoffrey Finch writes, “[w]ords mean in relation to each other, as well as in relation to an external reality” (2003. p. 147), and it is this compositional semantics which we will look at next.

Compositional Semantics: Meaning through Sentence Structure

To begin with, consider the following sentence:

Colourful red umbrellas moved playfully

We can certainly analyse this sentence in terms of phraseology. It contains two distinct phrases – a noun phrase with a pre-modifying adjective, and a verb phrase with a post-modifying adverb:

In the noun phrase, the words ‘red’ and ‘colourful’ are both adjectives, but ‘red’ functions as a determiner and ‘colourful’ as a pre-determiner. The phrase structure of the sentence might thus be written:

The verb phrase, in the contexts of the sentence, is modifying the noun phrase, and as such we have a rather nice sentence with is both descriptive and figurative (umbrella’s cannot literally be ‘playful’. This adjective is a personification).

In many ways, this sentence represents 'good English'. It is descriptive and creative, while at the same time being grammatically sound. Now, though, let us consider another sentence which demonstrates exactly the same sentence structure:

Colourless green ideas sleep furiously

In terms of its phrase structure and its grammar, this sentence works in exactly the same way as the previous example. Again, there is a noun phrase and a verb phrase, each of which is modified by adjectives and an adverb respectively:

If we are thinking grammatically, the answer to the question above is probably 'yes'. It ‘works’ as a sentence, and indeed the grammatical strength of the sentence might actually make you feel like the sentence makes as much sense as ‘colourful red umbrellas moved playfully’.

But there is a difference. The sentence ‘colourful red umbrellas moved playfully’ might be fanciful, but it does make sense and it contains a discernable meaning. The sentence ‘colourless green ideas sleep furiously’ though, makes no sense at all. How can something be described as both ‘colourless’ and ‘green’? Surely this is a paradox? How can ‘ideas’ have a colour? How can ‘ideas’ ‘sleep’? Finally, to ‘sleep furiously’ as a paradoxical oxymoron (a phrase which contains two contradictory terms).


The sentence ‘colourless green ideas sleep furiously’ was first coined by the linguist Noam Chomsky in his book Syntactic Structures (first published in 1957). The point he was trying to make was that there is a complex relationship between grammar and meaning which can often be deceptive (2002, p.15). Because the sentence makes grammatical sense

Generative grammar

Nigel Fabb of Strathclyde University writes that generative grammar “can be thought of as a collection of generalizations which can be used to decide whether a particular sentence is grammatical” (1994, p. 113). Fabb illustrates this with a simple example.

Let us, for a moment, imagine we have invented a very, very simple language, in which there are only four possible sentences. Each sentence is composed of a variation of three components (just as English sentences are composed of an object, noun, verb, etc.). We shall call these components X, Y and Z.

Recognising the components of the sentences, we can now describe the four sentences in our language as:

1. Y
2. XY
3. YZ
4. XYZ

From these patterns we can determine certain rules. Let us unpick them:

Observation: We can see that Y is a component of every sentence.
Rule: Therefore a sentence must include Y. A sentence with XZ is ungrammatical.

Observation: We can see that while Y is a constant, the sentences can either include or exclude X and Z.
Rule: X and Z are optional components in a sentence.

Observation: We can see, as well, that while X may appear before Y, Z only ever appears after Y.
Rule: Sentences which include ZY or YX are ungrammatical.

Indeed, we can now summarise these rules as follows:

Every sentence in the language fits into the following pattern:

(X) Y (Z)

A letter in brackets is optional

Generative grammars refer to the various theories which attempt to define a similar set of rules for the structure of the English language. As you can surely imagine, this is a far more complicated task for English than for our 4-sentence imaginary language above, and includes such dizzying observations as “a noun that is chosen to be the head of the subject in a clause is often likely to perform the action of the predicator, and to affect the referent of the object in some way” (Jeffries, 2006. p. 156). Indeed, the task is so enormously complex it can only ever remain theoretical.

There are many different kinds of generative grammars which have been proposed, such as the Government-Binding Theory, Generalised Phrase Structure Grammar, Relational Grammar and Lexical-Functional Grammar (Fabb, 1994. p. 113). Indeed, Chomsky’s Syntactic Structures, from 1957, was the first formal attempt at creating a generative grammar – and the achievement is one of the things which has made Chomsky regarded by many as “arguably the most important intellectual alive” (New York Times Book Review, 25 February, 1979).

Is Grammar more important than Words?

Because language is in a constant state of flux, theories of generative grammar constantly need to be modified and re-invented. After all, the association of words to objects in any given language is to a large extent arbitrary:

The fact that the sounds /tri:/ (‘tree’) are used to indicate the object growing in the ground is simple because this is the way out language works, but there is no reason why any other string of sounds wouldn’t do, providing other people could understand us (Finch, 2003. p. 132).

Words carry meaning because we learn to associate meaning with them. However, words can also carry meaning because the grammatical structure which surrounds them generate that meaning.

Words signify through a complex web of relationships by means of which they establish their own individual semantic space (Finch, 2003. p. 147).

As Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote, “the meaning of a word is its use in the language” (1957).

For example, consider the following poem from Lewis Carrol. Although the words included in it are literal non-sense, it is impossible not to somehow sense that there is a meaning there because although the words are invented, the grammatical structures they sit within are established.

An Example of Meaning through Grammar

Try reading this poem, and whenever you come to a word you do not recognise ask yourself whether you can classify it as a noun, a verb, an adjective, etc..

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

"Beware the jabberwock, my son.
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And as in uffish thought he stood,
The jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And has thou slain the jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe

Lewis Caroll

You have (hopefully) discovered from this poem that even though it makes no sense in terms of a rational and knowable meaning (or 'truth value'), it does make sense grammatically.  You can actually quite easily distinguish the nouns from the verbs simply in terms of their relationships to each other and to the grammatical identifiers around them.

Pragmatics: The Importance of Context

Here is an illustration from linguist William Ladusaw (n.d.).

Consider two people, Pat and Chris, who are getting to know each other on a first date. If Chris says to Pat at the end of the evening, "I like you a lot.", Pat will likely feel good about the situation. But imagine that Pat and Chris have been dating for some weeks, and Pat asks, "Do you love me?" Now if Chris says, "I like you a lot," the reaction will likely be quite different, as Chris' statement is taken as a negative answer! The difference does not come from the content of what is said but from the operation of a general pragmatic principle … the fundamental pragmatic difference between what is actually said and what is implied by the saying of it.

In this example, the meaning is shaped by the contexts in which language is being used. This is a meaning which is entirely separate from the sign (or the word), and from the grammar of the language being used. It is a meaning shaped by the pragmatic use of language – hence pragmatics (Saussure referred to this function as parole).

Words can have multiple meanings. The word ‘cat’ can have a simple signification, but depending on its contexts it can mean:

• Look out, there’s a cat!

• Ah! Look at that lovely cat!

• You are like a cat!

Most of the time we make unconscious decisions about how to determine which of the many different possible meanings to attribute to any particular word. Occasionally though, we are reminded of the problems which can occur through misinterpreting the contexts of language. These kinds of problems are a common source of humour. Consider, for example, the following extract from The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy:

Ford: You should prepare yourself for the jump into hyperspace; it's unpleasantly like being drunk.

Arthur: What's so unpleasant about being drunk?

Ford: Ask a glass of water.

Again, Ladusaw provides a useful analysis:

The passage turns on the ambiguity of the word 'drunk', which can be an adjective, meaning 'affected by alcohol', or the passive form of the verb 'drink'. Arthur takes Ford as intending the first sense of 'drunk'—with good reason: he's unlikely to mean that someone would drink him. But Ford reveals that the bizarre interpretation is what he intends. The art of the image is the metaphorical treatment of a person as a liquid; the joke turns on the sleight of hand which makes our semantic interpreter lean in one direction before pulling us back in an unexpected way with a disambiguation.

These examples illustrate our semantic and pragmatic abilities in action. The goal of linguistic research into meaning is to illuminate the processes and knowledge involved.

Bibliography

Finch, G. (2003). How to Study Linguistics, 2nd edn.. Basingstoke: Palgrave.

Jeffries, L. (2006). Discovering Language: The Structure of Modern English. Basingstoke: Palgrave.

Fabb, N. (1994). Sentence Structure. London: Routledge.

Caroll, L. (1872). Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There [internet]. University of Virginia Library. Available from: http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=CarGlas.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=all [Accessed: 14th March 2010].

Chomsky, N. (2002). Syntactic Structures, 2nd edn.. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Ladusaw, W. (n.d.). Meaning [internet]. Linguistic Society of America. Available from: http://www.lsadc.org/info/ling-fields-mean.cfm [Accessed: 14th March, 2010].

Wittgenstein, L. (1953). Philosophical Investigations, ed. Anscombe, G.E.M. and Rhees, R. Oxford: Blackwell

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~ Wednesday, 1 May 2013 0 comments