Linguistics Lecture Notes

Linguistics

• Scientific study of language.
  • Linguistic anthropology.
  • Sociolinguistics.
  • Phocolinguistics.

Philology

• Humanistic study of language.
  • Study of language and literature.
  • Study of literary texts.
  • History of language.
  • Fictional languages.

Philosophy of Language

• J.R.R. Tolkien.
• Charles Sanders Peirce: Pragmatism & Semiotics.
• Analytic Philosophy: Logical positivism.
  • Bertrand Russell: Principia Mathematica.
  • Ludwig Wittgenstein: "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."

Trivium

• The medieval University Curriculum derived from antiquity.
  • Rhetoric:
  • Study of the use of language to instruct & persuade.
  • Modes of expression.
  • Oratory.
  • Grammar:
  • Composition
  • Study of language & meaning.
  • Reading and interpretation.
  • Logic or dialectic:
  • Study of language and knowledge.
  • Syllogism.

Communication

• Speech and rhetoric.
• Persuasion.
  • Attitude change.
  • Advertising & marketing.
  • Political communication & propaganda.
• Communication theory.
  • Relational communication.
• Applied Communication.
  • Journalism - public relations.
  • Organizational communication.
  • Leadership.
  • Internal & external communication.
  • Strategic Communication.
• General Semantics: Language is how we make sense of evaluate events.
• Systems Theory: Language is how we relate to our environment.
• Media Ecology: Language is a medium of communication & perception.

Studying Language

• Syntactics: Studying the structure of language.
• Semantics: Studying meaning.
• Pragmatics: Studying how language is used in context.

Language

• Language is a form of symbolic communication.
  • Words are symbols.
  • Symbols represent / stand for / point to something other than themselves.
  • Symbols are arbitrary and conventional.
• Language is the primary form of symbolic communication.
• Language is the basis of verbal communication.
  • Verbal refers to the use of words in general.
• Language can be distinguished from paralanguage.
  • Accents, lisps, volume, speed, pitch.
  • Handwriting, font.
• Langue vs Parole.
  • Ferdinand de Saussure.
  • Walter Ong
  • The Presence of the World (1967).
  • Orality and Literacy (1982).

What is Language

• Phonemes: Units of sound - sounds that make a difference in meaning.
• Morphemes: Units that have meaning vocabulary, prefixes, suffixes.
• Syntax: Rules for combining units - grammar.
• All language is dialect - dialects within dialects.
• Idiolect: Individual's own personal dialect.

George Orwell "Politics and the English Language"

• Text should be simple & direct.
• Critics, politicians & humanities.
• Neil Postman "The Semantic Environment".
  • Context - language is a context.
  • Stupid talk: Talk thou doesn't know what environment its in.
  • Crazy talk: Irrational talk.

Language is Human

• Unique to human species, defining characteristic, key to our survival as a species.
• Progress over time - info passed down from generations.
• Thinking (self).
  • Intra personal vs. interpersonal communication.
  • Inner monologue/voice.
  • Learning how to speak later learn to internalize.
  • Learning how to speak = learn to think out loud.
  • While you're thinking - visualize, hear music, playback memory, perception, animal.
• Cognition & Consciousness.
• Von Humbolt Linguistic Relativism.
  • Language affects or determines the way we view the world.
  • Edward Sapir: Gives us tools for thought.
  • Benjamin Lee Whorf: Different languages provide different world news.
  • Each language is unique.
  • Dorothy Lee.
  • Every language has words that can't be translated.
  • Lera Boroditsky: Argument when thought can be in language.

Linguistic Relativism

• Fictional languages.
  • Anthony Burgess.
  • Arrival (Ted Chiang).
  • Esperanto Bahai.

Language & Thought

• Gender differences.
• Class differences.
• Education jargon.
• Euphemism, ads & marketing.
  • Softens: Passed away (died).
• Titles.
• Married names.
• Sexist language pronouns.

Definition of Man

• We create symbols, misuse them, use them.
• We define by saying what something is and what something is not (defined by negative).
• Language & Symbols instruments.
• Symbols can abstract ideas like "no" (negative).
• Second level thinking about thinking, inner dialogue, instructions, recalling.
• Terministic Screens (Burke).

Metaphor

• Simile:
  • Similarity.
  • Connection.
  • Comparison.
• Metonym:
  • Contiguity.
  • Association.
  • Connection.
  • Substitutes one term for another.
• Synecdoche: The part stands for whole.
• Toponym: Place stands for institution.
• Other forms of:
  • Containment.
  • Other forms of connection.

Metaphor (Traditional)

• Comparison between unlike things.
• Use concrete terms to represent abstract ones.
• Poetry, rhetoric, ornamental language.
• Figure of speech, figurative vs. literal language.
• "Mere metaphor"?

Metaphor (George Lakoff & Mark Johnson)

• Metaphor theory - everything is a metaphor.
• All language is metaphorical, symbols are metaphors.
• Beyond comparing - understanding and experiencing one thing in terms of another.
• Most powerful metaphors are deeply embedded in language and used unconsciously.
• Different metaphors in different languages (linguistic relativity).
  • Dorothy Lee, Vera Boroditsky.

Metaphors for Time

• Time is a line.
• Time is money valuable, limited, commodity, measurable.
• Alternatives - "time heals all wounds".

Metaphors for Conflict

• Fight, battle, war.
• Attack & defend.
• Enemy, ally, sides.
• Win or lose.
• Weapons - firearms, knives, swords, bombs.
• Alternatives - Courtship, prayer, identification.

Meaning

• Definition not best way to get at the meaning.
• Definitions are something humans create.
• Dictionaries are closed systems.
• Meaning vs Definition.
  • Behavioral view.
  • Response to a stimulus.
  • Action, reaction.
  • Information processing, cognition.
  • Nervous system.
  • Feeling thought, conception.
  • How I respond to others.
  • How I respond to myself.
  • How I imagine others will respond to me.
  • Predict individual response.
  • Predict generalized response.

Signal vs. Symbol

• Signal:
  • Reaction.
  • Directly connected to what it represents.
  • Casual/natural relationship.
  • Animal communication.
  • Non-verbal communication.
  • Ivan Pavlov Signal reaction immediate, reflex, knee jerk behavior.
• Symbol:
  • Reaction.
  • No direct connection to what it represents.
  • Arbitrary relationship.
  • Conventional relationship.
  • Pavlov, Signal of a signal.
  • Language, writing, Morse Code, ASCII.
  • Mathematics.
  • Icons.
  • Art, myth, ritual, dreams abstracting.
  • Symbol reaction delayed, reflective, thought.

Susanne Langer: Philosophy in a New Key: Feeling and Form

• Discursive Symbols:
  • Language, mathematics.
  • Definitions.
  • Propositional statements.
  • True/False.
  • Logic.
• Presentational Symbols:
  • Images, art, perception.
  • No definitions.
  • Not propositional not statements.
  • Not true/false.
  • Feeling.
  • Language made up of units with meaning.
  • Image works as a whole, no dictionary for images.

Codes

• Digital:
  • Arbitrary.
  • Mathematics, language.
  • Discrete units.
  • 1-to-1 correspondence.
  • Counting.
  • Yes or no.
  • Left brain.
• Analogic:
  • Not logical.
  • Resemblance, similarity analogy.
  • Images, non-verbal.
  • Continuous measurement (since not 1 to 1).
  • More or less.
  • Right brain.

Meaning

• Sign:
  • Signifier external.
  • Signify; represent, stand for, point to something other than itself.
  • Signified response.
• Signal
• The Meaning of Meaning.
• The Semantic Triangle.
  • Symbol:
  • Symbolizes
  • (Casual relation).
  • Thought of Reference.
  • Stands for.
  • Referent.
  • Refers to.
  • (Other casual net Can imputed relation).

Semiotics/Semiology

• Science of signs.
• Charles Sanders Peirce:
  • Index, icon, symbol.
• Ferdinand de Saussure:
  • Signifier & Signified.
  • Motivated vs. unmotivated
• Paradigmatic analysis.
  • Binary oppositions.
• Syntagmatic Analysis.
  • Word order.
  • Narrative structure.
• Context.
  • Ogden & Richards - The meaning of meaning.
  • Bronislaw Malinowski - Situational context.
  • Erving Goffman - Situations.
  • Richards - feedforward (provide context for understanding).
  • Paul Watzlawick - punctuation, Change: Principles of Problem Formation & Problem Resolution.
• Framing & Reframing.

General Semantics

• Alfred Korzybski, Science and Sanity (1933).
• Time-binding: Progress, Science ability to pass down knowings through generations.
• D: Perception, description, evaluation pragmatic approach.
• Accumulation of knowledge.
• Evaluation of knowledge.

The Map is Not the Territory (Korzybski)

• The word is not the thing it represents
• The symbol is not the referent
• Language is not reality.
• "Whatever you say it is, it isn't".
• But all maps are not equal.
• Structural similarity.
  • Structure, relationship.
  • Systems theory.
  • Structure practical utility.
• The Territory (according to modern science).
  • Objective reality "out there".
  • Laws of thermodynamics energy, differences, change.
  • Theory of relativity.
  • Uncertainty principle.
  • Chaos and order.

Mapping The Territory

• Human limitations subjectivity.
• Confirmation bias.
  • Selective process.
  • Selective exposure.
  • Selective attention.
  • Selective perception.
  • Selective retention.
• Men Seek for vocabularies that are reflections of reality.

Mapping the Territory

• Sense perception as mapping.
• Optical illusions.
• What is the Ames illusion room, window.
• Stroop test Words of colors.
• What our sensory organs take in is not what is actually.
• What we take in from external world is sensory data.
• Sensory data is ambiguous which we actively organize.
• We are not born perceiving, learn how to perceive.
• Learning to perceive takes place through experience.
• What we perceive is a function of our past experiences.
• "We see things not as they are, but as we are".
• Perception is a kind of instructive theory-making.
• We typically don't change our theories about the world unless we encounter problems.
• All perception is an attempt to establish a predictable continuity and impose order and structure onto chaos.

Generalizations about Perception

• Perception is subjective.
• Perception is a function of the biological structure of our nervous systems, and sensory organs.
• Perception is also a function of the ways in which we extend our senses through technologies.
• Perception is a function of culture (intersubjective).
• Perception a function of language and other coding systems and symbols that we employ.
• What we perceive is also a function of context.
• What we perceive is also a function of our needs, purposes, and values.
• Perception is transaction.
• Human beings are meaning makers.

Semantic Reactions

• Podcast.
• Science: Scientific method.
  • Empiricism empirical method.
  • Sense perception.
  • Our knowledge of the world is what we take in from our senses.
  • Instruments - to extend our senses data.
  • Generalizations (Through perceptions).
  • Induction- Specifics to generalizations.
  • Deduction- thinking things through.
  • If you can't test it, it's not scientific.
• Science is seeking most accurate map of territory.
• East used to be on top (north) Sunrise. Orient maps from all angles & directions.
• Every map distorts, maps are static reality is dynamic.
• Vortex & Spirals.

Abstracting

• Structural Differential.
• Abstraction vs. abstracting.
• Abstract vs. Concrete.
  • Abstract art.
  • Scientific term.
  • To abstract: to take one thing out of another (Salt out of Saltwater).
• Process of abstracting.
• Consciousness of abstraction.
  • Event level reality.
• Sensory information.
• Object (Perception).
  • Reality is broken by whatever we know is just a piece of what we know.
  • Animas dont know whats beyond its own perception (also babies).

Structural Differential

• Event level reality, out there, process.
• Object level- perception, experience.
• Language levels.
  • Naming- individual.
  • Describing - Particular.
  • Inferring similarities (relation).
• Abstraction Ladder (S. I. Hayakawa).
• Load reduction of complexity.

Process of Abstracting (Wendell Johnson, "People in Quandaries")

• To abstract.
  1. Leaving out details.
  2. Categorization.
  3. Subjective evaluation.

Consciousness of Abstracting

• Stereotyping.
• Prejudice.
• Scapegoating.
• Projection.
• Intersectionality.

Reification

• Concept of race changing over time.
  • Changes based on context.
  • Anthropologists base race on statistical averages.
  • Family ext. family & class & tribe & nation & natury.
• Identification.
• Frustration.
• Abstract concepts like love, success, demoralization.
• Operationalism: Operational definitions.
  • Concrete money (exact goal).
  • Specify procedures.

Consciousness of Abstracting

• Values.
• Issues.
• Models & maps.
• Art.
• Metaphors & definitions questions.
• Multiordinality - same word can stand for different level of abstracting.
• Bypassing two parties speaking at different levels of abstracting.
• Visual images.
• Mathematics (precise & abstract).
• Lower leus of abstracting.
• Avoiding dead level abstracting.
• Reality testing.
• Isms, shifters: pronouns, fillers.
• Bar doesn't polysemic.

20th Century Science

• Scientific revolution paradigm shift.
  • Albert Einstein.
  • 19th Century Darwinian evolution.
  • Non-Newtonian physics (Einsteinian physics).
  • Non-Euclidean geometry.
• Requires a parallel revolution in thinking.
• Axiom: Given truth / starting point (Aristotelian logic out from assumptions).
• Non-aristotelian: A.

Aristotelian Logic

• Law of Identity:
  • A = A
  • A thing is what it is.
    - A = B
    - 1 + 1 = 2
• Law of Excluded Middle:
  • Either A = B or A \neq B
  • Either True or False (either/or)?
• Law of Non-Contradiction:
  • Not A = B and A \neq B
  • Not True and False.

Non-Aristotelian Principles

• Non-Identity:
  • A is not A.
  • No identity relationships in nature non-additive, non linear (I cloud + I cloud = ?).
  • A map is not the territory it represents.
  • A symbol is not its referent.
  • A word is not the thing it stands for.
  • Whatever you say, it is not.
  • All members of a category are not the same.
  • Things change overtime.
• Non-Allness:
  • A is not all A.
  • We can never know all there is to know.
  • A map does not represent all of the territory.
  • Words can't say everything about the things they represent.
  • A person can't say all that can be said.
  • The word "is" doesn't mean "equals".
• Self-Reflexiveness:
  • An ideal map would contain a map of the map.
  • Language about language self reference.
  • George Herbert Mead - consciousness & self-consciousness.
• Paradox.
  • Alfred North Whitehead & Bertrand Russell theory of logical types puts things at different logical levels.
  • Kurt Gödel incompleteness theorem.
  • Douglas Hofstadter recursion, self-consciousness & AI.
  • Gregory Bateson metacommunication, relationship.

Non-Aristotelian

• Elementalism: breaking things down they can't be breaking down in reality… (in nature you can't take things out of context / environment).
  • Elementalism vs. non-elementalism.
• Two-valued vs. multi-valued orientation.
  • Statement of US Conservative vs Canadian Conservative difference good vs bad representation.
• "To be" or not "to be".
  • Is of identification.
  • Is of projection.
  • Shows equality.
• E Prime English w/o "is", "being", "be", etc.
• Intensional vs. extensional orientation.

Overview Semantic Reactions

• Abstracting, allness, & absolutes immediate vs. delayed. -- Signal & Symbol reactions.
  • Extensional devices:
  • Indexing: John 2010 not John 2020.
  • Dating.
  • Hyphens Chang not chair.
  • Quotation marks.
  • Plurals stab.
  • Verbs.
  • Quantifying terms.
  • Qualifying terms.

Facts

• What is a fact?
  • Statements statements of fact statements of descriptions.
  • True facts false facts.
  • Statements that can be determined true or false based on the available evidence.
  • Context, reports, operationalism.
• Proposition propositional logic.
  • Bertrand Russell.
  • Alfred North Whitehead.
  • Ludwig Wittgenstein.
  • Well-formed statements true or false.
• Logical positivism.
• Philosophy of Science.
  • Condon, sense data vs. system.
  • Deductive vs. inductive logic.
  • Empiricism.
  • Statements of description statements of fact.
  • Data vs. hypotheses & theories generalizations.
• Kod Popper.
  • Falsification.
  • Deductive Start w/ generalization.
  • Inductive, start w/ specifics.

Opinion/Judgments

• Values beliefs attitudes opinions.
• Definitions delimitations.
  • Statement of meaning a - axioms & postulates.
  • Dictionaries as closed systems.
  • Tautologies.

The Relational View

• Bateson "a role is half a relationship".
  • Gregory Bateson Steps to an ecology of Mind, Data Mind and Nature- Cybernetics and systems.
  • Difference that makes a difference.
  • Metacommunication.
  • Phatic communication ritual ex; hello, how are you.
  • Relationship as unit of analysis.
  • Paradox & double bind "be spontaneous", "do it be you".
  • The pattern which connects 7 m/it.
• Paul Watzlawick.
  • Pragmatics of Human Communication content and relationship level.
  • Codependency & enablers goal: family therapy.
• Deborah Tannen.
  • Relationship (of authority) dominates content-person reflections system

Culture as Symbol System

• Time-binding meaning making.
• System of signs.
• Linguistic relativism.
• Edward T. Hall -The Silent dimension Culture as language.
  • Extension of Sapir-Whorf -"Culture is communication".
  • Phoneme, morpheme, syntax isolate, sex, pattern.
  • Formal, informal, technical high vs. low context.
  • Intercultural & non-verbal communication.
• Ray L. Birdwhistell -Kinesics and Context (body language).
• Media as Language Sergei Eisenstein The Film Sense Film Form theory of montage Edmund Carpenter new languages language = medium extension of Sapir Whorf Hypothesis/linguistic relativism.
• Marshall McLuhan -Understanding Media: The Extension of Man media as translators grammer.