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Linguistics
The Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913) via Wikipedia
Linguistics is the study of language, including its elements, character, structure and modifications.
While much has been said in academic circles about recent structural and poststructural analyses of language, critical thinking about language is not a new phenomenon.
In ancient Greece, for instance, several major philosophers discussed some of the many issues arising around logos (speech, account, reason, definition, rational faculty, proportion) and onoma (name).¹
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¹ Definitions of Greek terms are from F. E. Peters, Greek Philosophical Terms: A Historical Lexicon (New York: New York University Press, 1967, pp. 110, 144), where further discussion of this topic is available.
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Latin
Constantine. Gold multiple minted in Ticinum, 313 AD. Wt. 39.79 g. via Wikipedia
Latin is a so-called ‘dead’ language of the Roman Empire.
Under Emperor Constantine I (280-337 CE), Rome adopted Christianity as the official state religion and Latin found its way into the liturgy.
The Catholic Church still reserves Latin for many ecclesiastical functions, and some parishes still celebrate Latin Masses. Why this language is often regarded as possessing some kind of stamp of legitimacy over any other human language remains a mystery.
The very idea of an esoteric language, known only by an educated few, as having some kind of exalted status seems to run counter to the universal message of Christianity. Perhaps this kind of exclusivity, and the worldly wealth and power associated with it, is somehow related to the unseemly attitudes that contributed to dark scenarios within the Inquisitions and the cruel, scandalous torture of so-called witches (and the property seizures that often went along with them).
Defenders of the use of Ecclesiastical Latin in Catholicism claim that its meanings change less over time, making it good for theological precision. However, one could say that an international language like English, with its extensive vocabulary (and willingness to synthesize and include words from other world languages) would be best suited to the goal of striving for precision in a religion concerned with the salvation of the entire world.
Having said that, it could be argued that Latin carries symbolic import as the Rome that crucified Christ came to be the center of Catholicism. Thus, some suggest that the use of Latin reminds believers of Christ’s victory over evil.
On this G voices the following opinion:
All languages attempting to speak of spiritual matters are merely poor attempts to capture what Hebrew does. I used to sing the latin mass and, while the chant was captivating, the language left me wanting.» Source
Related Posts » Aeneid, Apocrypha, Caste, Language, Sanskrit, Scholastics, Vergil
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Language
Kerouac On the Road scroll by emdot via Flickr
In the academic world it’s often assumed that the acquisition of different languages makes for a better, more valuable scholar. While this often may be the case, it’s not always.
Pierre Bourdieu notes that language, itself, has become a worldwide commodity. And in keeping with Foucault’s idea of discourse, Bourdieu says certain languages have more clout than others.
For Bourdieu and other sociologists like Max Weber, social institutions – like universities – tend to legitimize themselves. Western universities, for example, are compelled to justify high tuition fees coupled with boring, run of the mill professors exhibiting mediocre analytical skills and a limited ability to think creatively.
As socially recognized and highly competitive organs of knowledge dissemination, universities strive to produce a certain quota of publications. Meanwhile, many scholars and the reading public tend to uncritically associate the knowledge of original languages with rational, coherent thought and scholarly legitimacy.
Wendy O’Flaherty, although an exceptional researcher and writer, in part falls into this legitimacy trap. In the Introduction to her translation of the Rig Veda O’Flaherty writes:
This is a book for people, not for scholars. Real scholars will read the Sanskrit; would-be scholars, or scholars from other fields, will fight their way through the translations of Geldner (German), Renou (French), Elizarenkova (Russian) and others; they will search the journals for articles on each verse, and on each word; they will pore over the dictionaries and concordances (Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty, The Rig Veda, London: Penguin, 1981, p. 11).
And in footnote:
See appendix 3 for a bibliography of translations into European languages (Ibid).
While O’Flaherty lists noteworthy Asian commentators and Asian translators who render the Veda into European languages, interestingly enough, no mention is made of translations into contemporary Asian languages like Japanese, Korean or Mandarin.
She says the European translations are intended to encourage the “would-be scholar to make a better guess” than her own “educated guess on several problematic points” arrived at “by using the available scholarship” (Ibid., p. 12).
Does O’Flaherty contradict herself by elevating the ability of so-called “real scholars” while conceding that knowledge of an original language does not guarantee “correct” understanding?
If knowledge of original languages did guarantee correct understanding, the meanings of specific words and phrases in most ancient texts would not be continually debated and re-translated. By way of example, there’s no need to try to figure out what Sir Isaac Newton was trying to say with his three laws of motion, because we all get it. Ancient words and phrases, however, are continually being reinterpreted by self-proclaimed experts on the basis of new archeological findings, shifting academic approaches and societal changes.
With the exception of O’Flaherty and a handful of others, most translators go to great lengths to try to justify their particular rendering of problematic terms. They attempt to convince the reader that their ability to discern original meanings is as strong or stronger than all the other ‘specialists.’
And not only that. Many scholars push narrow-minded or far-fetched claims to make their translation of certain terms conform to their own point of view. In short, linguists and translators can disagree quite dramatically. These conflicted meanings arguably arise partly from incompetence, ignorance, ambition, and opinionated or wishful thinking.
Translation is clearly subject to human bias. Even with concerted and informed attempts to offer accurate translations, it’s doubtful that these biases may be eradicated. And even if translators could go through a time machine and be present when the ancient texts were actually written, the central obstacle to a precise and exact understanding of certain terms would persist: The translators themselves did not write the original text.
It seems safe to say that one can, in most instances, never fully understand another person’s mode of thinking and intent. To complicate things, consider contemporary English literature about which English-speaking scholars produce seemingly endless commentaries about the actual or “intended” meanings of certain English words and symbols. These intense debates occur within the very same language as that of the original texts.
Here, the student of religion may argue that religious texts differ from fiction because the former refer to fixed, unalterable truths. But this claim is complicated by the fact that the meaning of some religious terms change over time-such as angel and asura.
Moreover, the religious believer could say they have an advantage over regimented scholars because they possess higher forms of perception-that is, the alleged true meaning of a term is revealed or infused by God, even when reading that term in translation.
The scholar of religion cannot really prove or disprove such a claim. But scholars do point out that many apparently ‘revealed truths’ among believers often seem to contradict one another.
Meanwhile, several postmodern writers intentionally write texts with open-ended, ambiguous meanings. This creates, they say, a living dialogue between writer and reader instead of a dead monologue from writer to reader. The result, they seem to believe, is a ‘literary novel’ of higher value than say, ‘trashy pulp fiction.’ But arbitrary distinctions like this can become ingrained among literary circles, and are often loaded with unsavory, elitist connotations.
Another point to consider is that some believe that writers, themselves, may not be fully aware of their own intended meanings. And this is the underlying basis to a psychoanalytic approach to literature.
Clearly, scholars can and do produce insightful works without much knowledge of original languages. A good example would be John Kerr’s A Most Dangerous Method: The Story of Jung, Freud, and Sabina Spielrein (1993). Kerr openly admits to drawing upon the work of several translators. And perhaps this is a stronger method than merely relying on one’s own particular and possibly idiosyncratic translation of original texts.
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Particle-Wave Duality
Girls demonstrating wave-particle duality by James Guppy
The so-called “particle-wave duality” refers to the apparent contradiction that arises when we try to understand the nature of light.
Light may be understood as a wave phenomenon (i.e. energy) or as matter (i.e. a particle), depending on the experimental conditions under which we observe it.
Philosophers of science say the duality is bound up in the way we use language. And the conflict might be reconciled if we consider what language is and does.
Language, they say, not only describes but also informs our understanding of things spoken and written about. In short, our descriptions of the world around (and within) us shape our worldview.
Consider the moon, for instance. To an Apollo astronaut it might be taken as something to walk on. For an ancient Roman citizen believing in the state religion of old Rome, the moon might be seen as a somewhat mysterious place where the goddess Luna resides.
In ancient Iran, the moon was believed to be “The Great Man” who incarnates on Earth from time to time. And in the fairly recent past, the moon was whimsically said to be made of blue cheese.
In each of these cases, the words and the semantic context within which they’re placed shape the understanding of the thing described.
Although we might overcome the particle-wave duality by maintaining that it’s informed by current modes of describing and categorizing reality, this still doesn’t tell us much about the actual essence of light, energy and matter–or even if these observable phenomena have a ‘true essence.’
At some point language becomes inadequate. And many believe that sciences which use a symbol system, such as mathematics and physics, are equally as imperfect and incomplete to the task of describing reality.
Along these lines, the holistic thinker Peter Russell suggests that we should not confuse the map (i.e. scientific concepts and theories) with the thing mapped (i.e. supposed fundamental aspects of the universe).
The debate around describing and the described gets complicated, however. Some maintain that language is, in fact, adequate and is an integral part of reality. But this argument falls short when we consider how meanings have changed and continue to change throughout human history.
» Berkeley (George), Brahman, Einstein (Albert), Hume (David), Kant (Immanuel), Locke (John), Poststructuralism, Schrödinger (Erwin), Semiology, Tao, Young (Thomas)
Quine, Willard
Methods of Logic by Quine: brewbooks / J Brew
Willard Quine (1908-2000) was an influential American mathematician and philosopher who rejected Kant’s analytic-synthetic distinction and advocated a form of holism.
Quine argues that empiricism contains “two dogmas.” One dogma is the distinction made between intellectual constructs and facts. The second dogma is reductionism; that is, the belief that naming and meaning are the same.
Quine’s thought has been variously championed and critiqued. It seems that whatever way we look at the problems Quine addresses, we fall into the same trap: Language (and arguably all symbols, to include numbers) has conceptual and descriptive limits and can never be precise and complete.
In fact, the problem of the relation between symbols and reality is an age old one with no definitive answer.
On this point Heraclitus wisely said that we cannot step into the same river twice.
In sociology, Quine’s thought crops up in discussions about reification and the also about the relation between scientific truth claims on the one hand, and ideology, the profit motive and social power on the other hand.
» Science
Signified
Sign not in use by Joe Dunckley
In semiotics the signified is part of the sign. The signified is a concept or object represented by a signifier.
M. H. Abrams says
In the area of semantics, Saussure introduced the terminology of the sign (a single word) as constituted by an inseperable union of signifier (the speech sounds or written marks composing the sign) and signified (the conceptual meaning of the sign).†
†A Glossary of Literary Terms, eighth edition, Boston: Thomson, 2005, p. 149.
» Baudrillard (Jean A.), Semiology, Zeno
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Sign
Sign not in use by Joe Dunckley
Sign
In semiotics, the sign is the relation between a signifier and signified.
As an introduction to explaining the sign, Jeremy Hawthorn outlines a distinction between sign and symptom. The conventional understanding of the sign, he says, is entirely cultural while the symptom is entirely natural.
But Hawthorn notes that some theorists see the symptom as a subset of the sign. For instance, Michel Foucault‘s study of the history of medicine and the ‘medical gaze’ suggests that an ironclad distinction between sign and symptom is questionable.
Speaking about the sign, itself, Hawthorn says that theorists like Jacques Lacan regard the relationship between signifier and signified as problematic because meanings are “shifting, multiple and context-dependent” (A Concise Glossary of Contemporary Literary Theory, New York: Routledge, 1992, p. 161-163).
M. H. Abrams, defines signs as “conveyors of meaning” and notes that they apply not just to language and text but to a wide array of human activities and productions–e.g. morse code, traffic signals, what we wear, bodily postures, what we serve our guests for dinner, where we live, etc. (A Glossary of Literary Terms, eighth edition, Boston: Thomson, 2005, p. 289).
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Semiology (or Semiotics)
discriminación by Dimitri dF
Semiology (or Semiotics)
The study of signs. The term was coined by Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), and semiology was originally taken to be a science.
But more recent theorists in several disciplines have questioned the entire notion of the ‘scientific enterprise,’ which some regard as just another sign.
Indeed, semiology includes or, one could say, branches off into postmodern deconstruction, an approach which questions the distinction between denotation and connotation, along with many other culturally implied truth claims, normative structures and practices.
Some argue that pioneering semiologists like Roland Barthes contained the seeds of what would become known as a postmodern approach.
» Baudrillard (Jean), Foucault (Michel), Sigified, Signifier, Structuralism, Wittgenstein (Ludwig Josef Johann)
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Scholarship
Glasgow University by pixelsandpaper
Scholarship
Pierre Bourdieu, Karl Marx, Max Weber and other sociologists say that social institutions tend to legitimize and reproduce themselves.
Perhaps a slightly jaded view, some see universities as centers of knowledge dissemination that must justify high tuition fees and the reality of sometimes uninspiring, second-rate instructors.
Critics add that, as part of the process of legitimization and reproduction, universities produce a quota of publications, some of which wouldn’t survive in the free market beyond the confines of the university bookstores. And because textbooks are often keyed in with assignments and exams, students may feel pressured into paying inflated prices for books if they wish to do well in their courses.
The other side of this argument is that universities are specialized training centers, making tailor made textbooks necessary and costly by virtue of their relatively low circulation. Just as a detailed auto repair manual may never be a bestseller but is necessary for the auto mechanic, university books in the Humanities are necessary for the trade of “critical thinking.”
In fields such as history and religious studies, students – some of whom might not readily realize they are, in part, consumers of education – are implicitly or explicitly encouraged to associate the knowledge of original languages with scholarly legitimacy and coherent thinking. This is a fallacy often overlooked by those too easily dazzled by a phalanx of references in foreign languages. And one not need to look too far to find utterly shoddy articles which, perhaps, try to impress readers with a slew of references in various languages.
Along these lines, a postmodernist might argue that scholars should be just as concerned with recent language theory instead of conforming to the age-old tradition of upholding proficiency in languages as an emblem of scholarly legitimacy.
Further to Bourdieu’s claim that most scholarship doesn’t exist in isolation but in institutions laden with cultural connotations by virtue of their being accredited as universities and colleges, one might ask: What are these places really like? How do they function? How effective are they? And how do they connect with other social institutions and practices?
Historically speaking, centers of so-called higher education and their resident scholars vary dramatically. From the Confucian courts, the Old Academies of Plato and Aristotle, the ashrams of Sankara and Gorakhnath, the early Oxford and Cambridge, the University at Salamanca, the Renaissance University of Padua, the New Florentine Academy, to today’s Visva-Bharati and other unique universities around the world, the definition of quality education takes many forms.
Perhaps the relation among language, pedagogy and societal legitimacy is best summed up by Confucius, who in The Analects says:
A gentleman would be ashamed should his deeds not match his words.
» Digital Scanning, Equal Rights, History, Individual Rights, Sociology
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Sanskrit
Sanskrit blogging on the rise by Debashish Chakrabarty
Sanskrit (samskrta = cultured, perfected, in contrast to prakrta = uncultured, popular)
One school of thought believes that an early form of this ancient Hindu language originated with Aryan invaders and their Vedic hymns around 2,000 BCE.
Another view suggests that an early form of Sanskrit existed within the Indus valley.
Regardless of its disputed origins, the speakers of Sanskrit believed, as do many Hindus today, that the correct pronunciation of this language elevates individuals to higher levels of spiritual awareness.
In Hinduism the Vedas, Shastras, Puranas and Kavyas were composed in Sanskrit.
Although Pali is the primary language of Buddhist scripture, some Mahayana texts were composed in a hybrid Sanskrit.
Sanskrit has also found its way into Jain scripture. The earliest surviving character of its unique Devanagari (language of the gods) script is dated at 150 CE.
Not unlike Latin in the Catholic Church, Sanskrit remains sacred and prestigious among teachers and students throughout India and beyond.
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