Language and Personhood

In college the linguistics professors were so enamored of language that they believed meaningful abstract thought itself was not possible without the framework of language. Much of this belief seemed to come from the fact that they, and most other people, do most of their conscious thinking in words.

I disagree that language is necessary for thought. Once I showed one of my professors a Japanese origami book – although I could not read the kanji at all I could follow along with the various arrows and other symbols to create little works of art. That is one of the beautiful things about origami: there is an international system of symbols used to communicate folding sequence and in fact you really don’t need written instructions to demonstrate how to make something.

So, I had this book that could communicate very abstract ideas translatable to reality without using language. The professor’s reaction was that I was indeed using language to understand what I was doing, that the arrows and dotted lines of the origami symbols were the language. This in spite of the fact that earlier in the class she had explained that real languages like English and German and Nheengatu have syntax and vocabulary and grammatical structures and so forth – abstract symbols alone are not language, a dog’s bark can convey different meanings but is not a language, a parrot can learn to say “water” or “treat” or “no” to communicate its needs and Koko the gorilla can use signs, but without grammatical understanding they are not using true language.

Since origami symbols are clearly not a true language, although they do communicate complex, abstract thought that translates from two dimensions to three or four, I maintain that it is possible to have abstract thought that cannot even be described under the constraints of language. When I am folding or thinking about folding, I do not think in language; although there are times when I may be able to think “bisect this angle” or “unfold this flap” most of the techniques and ways of moving the paper cannot be described by words. The movements exist only visually and temporally.

Likewise with music – there is little else more abstract than a Classical symphony or a Baroque concerto, yet they convey thought that cannot be adequately described through language. Thought can exist apart from language.

But I believe that language is certainly a very important tool for communicating ideas abstract or not.

I came across this video earlier today:
In My Language
http://ballastexistenz.autistics.org/?p=287,
The first bit can get annoying with all the repetitive motion and keening sounds, but at 3:13 there is the “translation” where the autistic lady speaks through a synthetic voice about how she experiences the world, not through language and symbols but through instances and interactions and senses.

It is very fascinating to imagine experiencing the universe in such a different way. However, in her translation she would blame those of us who use language for thought naturally for finding fault in her inability to do so, and that it is our deficiency that we do not bother to understand her language. She says that it is because of our own deficiency that we might question her personhood.

I think she misses the point here entirely! Perhaps it is the Libertarian thought in me that says that one of the noblest goals, the purpose of liberty, is to find your own way to be self-sufficient. In order to do so, to acquire job skills, to manage money, to run a household, etc., you need to be able to communicate with other people. Part of what it means to be a free person is to be able to be responsible for yourself. To me, that is why a language common to multiple people is important. One’s own inner language is not going to get the job done. It is not for nothing that all human societies probably since before we became Homo sapiens have used language.

Now, I do not know if this autistic lady does indeed manage all of her own business herself. Maybe unlike so many other autistic people she does. But it is not her annoying humming or repetitive movements that might have me question her personhood, or her self-awareness; it would be her ability to live independently. This is not to say that children dependent on others are lacking in personhood, but one important aspect of childhood is that children are expected to soon be independent and responsible for themselves.

While I agree with this lady that to constrict thought to only what language can convey is to limit one’s experience of existence, I believe it is possible to have both a real language with which to communicate with the outside world an inner language capable of interpreting what cannot be described by words.
They do not have to be in conflict with each other.

That's very interesting. I don't usually think of that "inner language." I've noticed that when I'm about to phrase an idea, I get this thought that's not really words... it's just... a thought. And then the words come out, almost as if I'm translating from this quick thought that conveys everything to the slower verbal communication. Of course, I only notice that when I'm so bored that I don't have very many things to notice.

Anyway, I think according to what you've posted, sign language is definitely a language of its own. People can conduct their business with it. But I'm not entirely sure that the ability to take care of oneself defines a language. That sounds a bit... strange.

So this thread is nearly the first thing I have to see on my first visit to the Red Room after months of cold turkey? Damn you, you know I can't resist this!

On the origami, I'd agree with what your professor said. I (still) don't know enough about origami to judge for myself, but from your own description of arrows, conventionalised (!) signs and so forth, it certainly sounds like a learned and somewhat arbitrary system of communication, and thus a language, to me.

You point out that it supposedly lacks syntax; but I am not sure that that is the case. You can identify individual elements, as you do when you call some parts "arrows", for instance; and I strongly doubt that you could take an origami instruction, move those individual elements around freely on the page, changing their relation to each other, and retain the same meaning. But that's exactly what syntax is. (It's easy to overestimate the necessary complexity of syntax based on Western European languages, which have some of the most complex morphological and positional syntactical rules in the world. Think of isolationist Cantonese syntax as a more minimal form of syntax that is clearly still language.)

On the larger issue of abstract thought and its connection to language, I'd argue that the claim that we engage in abstract thought "by means of" language is just a clumsy way of expressing the truth that the main mechanism of language is abstraction, which means that language is impossible without abstraction and abstraction is essentially the core of language. In fact, to abstract something from other things is nothing but to introduce some kind of mental "anchor" that points at several empirical representations of individual things or instances, but cannot be seen as pointing to one specific such instance. (If it did point to one specific such instance, it would not be abstract.) But such a sign -- that's what a thought-anchor that points to things is, after all -- is the very heart of lingual cognition.

I don't understand enough about autism to have a clear opinion of that, but I suspect that when someone says "this is how I understand the world", the implications of "understand" always already cover the kind of abstraction described above.

I would claim this is language.



What irks me about linguistics professors and their ilk (philosophers, etc.) is that they think that naming things is fundamental to everything - that we have to have knowledge of some kind of language with "words" to do anything else.

So...infants don't have abstract thought because they don't know language?

Because that is essentially what your professors are saying.

This is Wordforge Labs material...so WHOOSH!

I read in my psychology book last year that tests on 6 month old babies have proven that they understand that a weight, for example a box, needs to have most of its base supported by a surface (say, a table) for it to remain stable without falling. Babies were shown images of boxes that were somehow not falling, even though only a small part of a base was supported by a table, and they looked puzzled. This lead researchers to believe that babies have an understanding of gravity and what should and should not fall.

Babies have no spoken language, but they do have those kinds of thoughts.

Also, cats don't have a spoken language (not much of one, anyway) but there's a lot of rogue packs of cats out there, wandering in neighborhoods, who have managed to convey important information to each other: if one female gives birth, she'll select another one to help her with the children. They know when to look for food together. They can communicate enough to say where they found the food, they can send messages to each other (by purring) to indicate happiness or distress.
But do cats have knowledge of the abstract? I wouldn't think so, but they do appear to have a very basic language.

If you think that basic understanding of the way that objects, weights and gravity function indicates abstract thought, then cats definitely have that. And they certainly know how to look puzzled, no?

Not English != not a written language. Any organized system which communicates ideas is a language, whether exclusively visual, exclusively auditory or both. Even body language is a form of systematic communication, as is intonation even in the absence of words.

Excellent point. I stand corrected.

It doesn't matter if there's not enough words to describe something. French have maybe 1/6 of the words English has, but from what I've learned these past 4 years, it's a very complex, very good language. It has great structure, the grammar is pretty easy to understand (as far as I've gotten into it, anyway), and they repeat the same words to describe a lot of the same things. It doesn't mean they can't feel anything.

It's not really an inadequacy. It just means that a word wasn't necessary as a culture developed its language. Therefore, that word didn't get made up.

Also, imagine if we did have 5 or 10 words for love. OUCH! It's hard enough already, and confusing enough already.

I guess the question here is, does language affect experience? Can you experience a full range of emotions within a limited language. I say yes.

I don't think so. I assume there is a smallish basic set of affective states that remains at the basis of any culturally determined emotional experience, but it's bastraction and language that really opens up the complicated arrays of emotion we feel. And language is, though not identical to, indispensable for that cultural superstructure. As an example, remember that romantic love -- which most of us consider one of the strongest and most biographically potent emotions -- is a very recent invention.

Quite true. Understanding a language doesn't help explain the appeal of music plus you don't need to know any language to enjoy it. If anything, I think music is a precursor to language.

No, language isn't a necessity for emotion. It's necessary to quantify it, express it, and often to self-analyze it, but the range of emotions aren't limited by your ability to label them or bisect them.

So would you assume that people have always felt classical romantic love in earlier times, and feel the same even in foreign cultures now, but just lacked or lack the words to express that feeling?

And vice versa, would you say that you and I experience the various specific shades of "honour" that a Greek nobleman 3000 years ago, or a samurai, or Mututsi feels, but just don't realize it and don't act in accordance with it because we don't have the words?

Indeed.

Philosphers and linguists seem to shun the idea that you can think in pictures. They seem to think that worded thoughts are all the brain is capable of - and forget about the fact that half of thinking is made of intuition, wordless metaphore and visual thinking, inklinations or even obsessions.

They also forget that our brain is doing much of its "thinking" on its own, subconsciously.

Remember Kekule, who allegedly found the solution to the benzene ring formula in a dream?





Maybe antropology and neurology can shed more light on this matter than linguistics can.


Does one need a word to experience something? No.

There are languages, which don't make a clear distinction between green and blue. Instead they only know one word for all those colors - say "grue". Tests show that people who only know "grue" can differ between greenish/blueish colors as easily as those who use both "green" and "blue".


Does one need words to think? It depends.

Neurology suggests, that one half of the brain - usually the left one - is thinking in words, the right one is thinking in pictures.

Here's a recent experiment about this very topic:

To make the following quote more clear, I should add that input from the left side of each eye goes to the right side of the brain and vice versa.

But the real question is... would anyone still like pie if we didn't have a word for it?

*pictures a bird stealing your sandwich out of midair while you're walking through the park at lunch break*

No, I would say you don't seem to be able to extract the elaborate social constructs we've created around those emotions from the emotions themselves.

There is no emotion 'honor.' And the concept of 'classical romantic love' is the same - highly stylized social constructs as a way of resolving or adapting to certain conditions aren't the emotion. For example you could easily woo a mate using all the normal western customs - love poetry, gifts, dates, progression of intimacy, asking the parents for permission to marry - and not feel any emotion to the subject at all.