Dissertation: about use and abuse of language philosophy

"language is the sedimentation of human experience" Husserl

Introduction.

This present work try to speak about a series of conditions around some considerations made by Teun A. Van dijk, namely: how semantic and pragmatic can be articulate on the speech? This work stands in its attempt to establish that relation between 'use and abuse of language philosophy', what is our goal. I think that it's possible, with Van Dijk, to establish a 'science of the text' which can show, by categories, the different kind of texts without referring of a specific conditions on a specific situation, which is the matter of a particular science like semantic, for example.

So, we have a science of the text that can speak about semantic as well as pragmatic on the language, or the way of articulation of those languages in context specifically of literature; the development of the theories literature, linguistic, semantic, correspond to the literary criticism, respectively. But this possibility of a science of the text can be use in an abusive way if we pretend to make universal the categories of analysis and excluding the facts that happen, as if the only important thing was the language and the way in which its appear. Let's go to see what happen with the thesis.

For now, our material are three ancient texts, which are: Cratilo by Plato; peri hermeneias by Aristotle and De magistro by Saint Augustine. What we will going to do is a small summary of the texts and a comment, making a purpose about if is legal or not talk about a 'science of the text' in the described terms. On the other hand, we will going to use a few ideas of Rorty, Van Dijk and Terry Eagleton, to feed up the discuss that we are trying to present on this work.

Cratilo

"I would find greater to know

what do you think about the

accuracy of the names"

During all the dialogue of Plato we can guess two things that are so interesting to Plato. First of them is to know if the names of the things have some in common with the essence of the things itself or if they are only conventions made between humans; the second one is, if names are not conventions, who input the names?. In order to explain this last thing, is appropriate go to the text and see the two thesis that Plato use through the entire dialogue: in effect, or the names have a direct relation with the essence of the things or not; naturalism or conventionalism. In the dialogue Socrates tries to support the naturalism, saying:

for that reason, if all is not for everyone equal at the same time and in all time, nor everyone of the beings are different to each individual, is clear that things have a be which belong to them and is conscious. The things have no relation with us and neither let us manipulate by our imagination, but they are for its own sake and in relation with their own being in accord with nature (cratilo: 20)

This has been said because of this: the things cannot be for everyone what they think the things are, because there are times and spaces which vitiate the sense, and its clear that the dog is still a dog today and tomorrow, the same that human an animals. And if we can to announce this things in different times, then there is no difference and the essence of the dog remains, what allow us to still bring it that name. If every thing has its essence, for which essence there is a specific name:

So if we talk as we think is correct to talk, will we speak correctly, or will we going to speak better if we speak as its natural that things being spoken, and, on the contrary, if we don't do it will we going to fail? (...) So will we have to name like is common that things being named and with the natural instrument, and not as we want, if we have the possibility to make any agreement about it? And in that case, will we have some success? (cratilo: 21)

From all past reflection Socrates concludes that if the drill is for drilling then the name is for nominate, what makes the name the category of 'instrument'. So "to use the name in a good way", will say Socrates, is use the name "among the function of to teach, something that have much in common with Saint Augustine and his "De Magistro", when he affirm that 'the word hurt the ear', in an exercise of 'remember'. Now well, before that, Socrates says that the name is an (im)position, independently if its a convention. The matter turns much more complicated while Socrates says that there is distance between who knows the construction tool and who use the tool.

-Soc. -Well, who is going to decide if is possible  to find in any kind of wood the best form of the shuttle: the maker, or who is going to use it, the weaver?

-Herm. - Is more reasonable, Socartes, that be the weaver decide it. (Cratilo: 25)

Then, after of a large analysis in which the speakers spend time looking for the origin of many names, as well of gods as concepts, Socrates find two things: 1) the names have a relation, mostly, with the movement, and he remember Heraclitus and his "everything flows" by the way to the movement, but this reflexion stop at the moment to speak about justice, which has no equality like other names like "episteme" and "rema" 2) Is the thinking, from gods or humans, which input the names (Cratilo: 60). For this way Socrates says that from the names the next thing is the beautiful, in a pretty good words-game (understandable only in ancient Greek) between "the nominative" (tò kaloûn) and "the beauty things" (kalá). 

This worry of Plato about the origin and use of the language born of understanding it as 'instrument' that is used by made something. Plato wants to establish the correspondence between words and things, some ontology relation that allow find that relation. However Plato does not establish the question for the correct use of language; that is to say, he believes that language can be used good or bad, as any other instrument, and is in the use where the utility of language can be determinate. Is Aristotle who made the ask of the structure of the language.

Peri hermeneias.

"for its own sake, verbs are names and means something

-because who talk stop the thinking,

and who heard rest-, but

they are not suggest if <something> do exist or don't"

The worry of Plato is about the exactitude of the names at their use, but Aristotle changes the problem and begin to ask for the logic structure of the names. In effect, both philosophers want to determinate the way in which the truth 'appears in the language', but they chose different ways. At his 'peri hermeneias', Aristotle tries to define what is a verb and a name, and from there to establish what is true and falsehood, contradiction and contrary, only for saying some of them.

Now well, to create a logical structure which be able to show the announces and the way in which they show true or falsehood, Aristotle creates the notion of 'possibility', and he uses it in many ways. First of all, he is not interested in Plato's question about the essence of the words and the relation word-essence; he believe that this is a conventionalism:

And, [5] as the words are not the same for everyone, neither the sounds are the same. So, about the things are signs basically, the affections of the soul, <are> the same for everyone, and about these things are likeness, the things, also <are> the same (Aristotle: 2)

His interest is the 'possibility' to say true or falsehood: "so then, nothing is or becomes by random, nor turns into anything randomly, nor will be or will not be, but everything are <what they are> by need" (Aristotle: 12). This opposition between need and possibility is what lately forms the question about what the truth is only in the context of the proposition. Probably what the stagirite is looking for, once he find the conventionalism of the language, is to create a structure in which everyone can participate to know about what are we talking when we are talking; or for saying with him, the similarity of the affections of the soul.

With a structure of the language the matter has anything in common with knowing the relation between words and things, because as he says, a name an a verb can mean something but cannot determinate if that "something" do exist or don't. In order of these ideas, is legal to think that the stagirite understand the language as an instrument that we can use to affirm or to deny:

and affirmation is the assertion of something link to something, and negation is the assertion of something separated to something. Now, as its possible, to say that doesn't exist what do exist and to say that do exist what doesn't exist, and the same thing about the different times of the present, we could deny all of what one affirm and affirm all of one deny; so is evident that to any affirmation correspond a negation and to any negation correspond an affirmation. And this is a contradiction; I say that are opponents <affirmation and negation> of the same about the same (but not so the same name, or any of the other ways we distinguish against sophistical distortions) (Aristotle: 7)

The language has this possibility; however the possibility is not limitless, and cannot be said anything bye anyway. In effect, the possibilities of the language to express truths and falsehoods are explained by Aristotle with the notion of "plus" and "subtract", as he can say the following conclusion:

is clear that the real one is not possible to be contrary to the real one, nor the opinion and the contradiction; because they are contrary ones <that talk> about the opposites, and about these is possible that the same <person> speak truthful: on the contrary, is not possible that the opposites are in the same time at the same place (Aristotle: 30)

From the same point of view one thing cannot be the same at the same time will say Aristotle. By introducing the concept 'time' he is saying that Being, one, unchangeable, has no relation with the language, which is changeable and treats about changeable things. Unintentionally, Aristotle anticipates that the languages has the ability to change things, because he believes that there is a needed of the things: "Because we wouldn't have spend time in discussing and worrying <thinking> that, if we made this move, it will happen this thing, and if we don't, if won't" (Aristotle: 13). The use of the language is in this case to establish the conditions in which the truth appear; contexts indicates if the propositions do work or don't in a specific case. Ultimately Aristotle defends a position in which the context of enunciation create the frame in which the language establish its possibilities in every speech-act. If the context change, the language change, and for the necessary things its no needed to think what would happen, but how can we determinate the neediness of the things and the language?

By now we can say that the need of the language has anything in common with an ontology between the word and the thing, a relation that is able to show the need that the word for a thing is only own and there is a correspondence with the being of the thing, because Aristotle recognize that there are many languages, different in sounds and this makes difficult to speak about the being of the thing from a linguistic point of view; from an ontological point of view the being is need and is one, so the problem has been solved. However this problem will going to come back in the Middle-Age as "universals" and "particulars" from the hand of Guillermo of Ockam and others.

De Magistro.

“At ego puto ese quoddam genus docendi

per commemorationem, magnum sane,

quid in nostra hac sermocinatione res ipsa indicabit”.

Augustine of Hippo in his text "De magistro" develop a conception of the language as a tool of the speak that can be used to teach (Augustine: 683). This kind of conception can be anticipated from the tittle, in which he shows the way of the argumentation. On the first chapter, Augustine says: "So who is speaking, show externally the sign of his volition through the articulation of the sound) (Augustine, 1947: 685) This notion of the sign is one of the most important topics on the whole text, because the signs allow me remember: "through the locution what we do is to remember, when the memory, where the words are recorded, bring us, around itself, to the spirit of the things, about the words are signs" (Augustine, 1947: 687)

The sign cannot be without representing something (Augustine: 687). Augustine says that every single word is a sign but he cannot explain it when he uses the word 'nihil'. "For that reason, [nihil] is not a sign, because means nothing; and falsely we have said that every word is sign or means something" (Augustine, 1947: 687). The attempt to explain how the words are signs which represent itself is, lately, a reduction to the absurd; Augustine believes that if the task of the language is teach, if we go from word to word we teach with the example, and signs are not made anymore by words but by gesticulations:

have not you seen how men almost speak by gesticulation with deaf, and the same deaf ask with gestures and answer, teach, show everything that they want to? In this case not only the visible things can be show by words, but sounds too, flavors and similar things (Augustine, 1947: 691)

Every single question in the dialogue between Augustine and his son Adeodato goes to how we have to teach, because learning is here to remember, a remembrance. About that Manuel Martinez wrote in the introduction of De Magistro:

The soul in its essence has prefigured all of those eternal truths, and when the soul knows those truths, with the help of God, then realized about what it already knew virtually, and, in this sense, soul remember. Saint Augustine conserves, after all, the word 'reminiscence', and he throw up the plato's meaning to the word and introduces his own doctrine, bringing to that word a sense of illumination (Augustine, 1947: 642)

Augustine shows a definition of the signs, and at the same time he wants treating the question about how we have to teach something: "Because we call universally signs to the whole things that mean something, along we can account with the words" (Augustine, 1947: 701). He has already shown that we teach with words but about we talk are something 'visible', that is not in the word but in the world. However if we speak about words, then Augustine explains the reciprocity of the signs and about it is that he establish the idea of remember in fifth chapter, where he says:

"if this is it, then every word is a name and every name a word (...) You realize, I think, that everything which is meaning something grow up through the articulation of the voice, hurt the ear to activate the sensation and its transmitted to the memory to bring knowledge (Augustine, 1947: 705)

To a science of the text.

"The world does not speak. Only we can do that.

The world, once we have ajusted

to the program of the language, can make that

we got determinate beliefs.

But it cannot give us a language 

to be spoken by ourselves. 

Only others human beings can do that." Rorty

The reciprocity about meaning words by words is a problem of language philosophy about context of enunciation. Is because this that Van Dijk is interested in begin a 'science of the text' about it must be possible take in account the linguistic problems as a one problem, like a "new interdisciplinar science" (Van Dijk, 1983: 13) With the re-count of classic texts we can see that all of them understand the language as a tool which is developing on its use; Van Dijk wouldn't have any trouble in recognize this as a true, but the general problem is that the words which are referring to other words in context of enunciation more and more specific, and this makes so difficult the study:

Also the concept of "style" is referring to the use of the language, but in this case is alluding to a special properties, individualizing, inside of special social contexts, and to functions and actions/effects special inside the communication process. So because the style cannot be studied properly through words, groups of words or individual phrases, because is referring to the linguistic statement as totality, also in this case it would be more properly a frame of the science of the text. (Van Dijk, 1983: 18)

Those kinds of worries have its referent on the language, about Van Dijk speak at the moment to rise up the distinctions between the different branch of study of the language and base his 'science'. "...Linguistic treats the different ways about "forms of use of the language", it means: about texts" (Van Dijk, 1983: 18). However, still we have the question: to which point has validity to establish a 'science of the text'? Van Dijk tries to establish a category, a general frame of study about the different kind of texts, and the science of the text becomes an interdisciplinar science. In order of these ideas, he says that "we can considerate the rhetoric as a historical precedent of the science of the text if we pay attention to the general orientation of the classic rhetoric, consists of the description of the texts and its specific functions. (Van Dijk, 1983: 19)

The advantage of a science of the text is the ability which is acquired to take in account social, cultural, philosophical problems (only for mentioning some of them), eluding specific contexts, not because those context are not important, but leaving them to the sciences which has the ability to solve those problems with more precision: "one of the tendencies of the anthropological investigation, namely: the 'ethnography of speaking', what have interest mostly about the description of those coincidences of differences of the text and communications on different cultural contexts" (Van Dijk, 1983: 27) And is on the context (in the use of the language) where the limits of the language can be determinate. By the way, Rorty said on "Contingency, Irony and Solidarity":

The temptation of looking some standards is a specie of the temptation, more general, of think that the world, or the human being, have an intrinsic nature. That is to say, is the result of the temptation of privilege one of many language in which we habitually describe the world or describe ourselves (...) if any time we manage conciliate with the idea that the reality is, in its most part, indifferent of the descriptions that we made of it, and that the I (...) is created for the use of a lexicon, finally we have understood (...) that the truth is something that is made more than be discover. What is true on that affirmation is, precisely, that the 'languages' are made, not discover, and the truth is a property of linguistic entities, of propositions (Rorty, 1991: 27)

This argument is the reaction to postures like has Terry Eagleton, who from other philosophic perspective says something against Rorty is fighting, and is guess an order, a natural essence intrinsic of the things:

When the science see the world, what its know is an impersonal space of causes and processes very independent of the subject and worrying indifferent to the value. But the fact that we usually can know the world, although how terrible can be the discovers that we made, it must be presuppose that it exist some kind of fundamental harmony between us and he (Eagleton, 2006: 126)

Perhaps the fundamental problem of philosophy [of language] is putting things in dichotomies and antinomy, or synthesizing excluded, that left out many things that are important:

Thus the fighting between romanticism and moral-ism, between idealism and realism continue to the extent we think there is hope to find him a sense of whether a given language is 'appropriate' for a task: to the task of adequately express the nature of the human species or to the task of representing its own way the structure of non-human reality (Rorty, 1991: 31)

The attempt, therefore, by Van Dijk of founding a science of the text is valuable if it is assumed as the overcoming of ideological struggles on particular subjects and who have to try, but it is problematic if one thinks, and with good reason-that the science is which can be applied to all areas of human life and refers only to how we understand the world through language. Set basic theoretical assumption human language as a science and the world as a text to interpret may be valid provided there is a direct reference to human experience, otherwise, set meta (and their respective meta) is to give the language more power than they should have.

Indeed, if we referred to the former was to show how they regarded the language an object of study in itself but a tool which we use and give a specific use. This usage is that reflection should fall, which means the study of categories, methods, semantic structures, and applies to meta, but we must warn the danger involved: a misuse of the categories of analysis that end unreferenced. Language is the sedimentation of human experience, why ask about the language we use to refer to the language on which we sediment our experience? Is not this a depletion of concepts and the experience itself, as it senses the possibility of falling into a reductio ad absurdum? What if we lose sight of the practical horizon of the knowledge questions, the reference point, the world that gives rise to such thoughts ...?

Literature.

Platón. Crátilo. Edición en línea disponible en:http://www.acropolis.org.uy/Investiga_y_Comparte/Biblioteca_Virtual/Platon/Platon%20-%20Cratilo.pdf

Aristóteles. Sobre la interpretación. Edición en línea disponible en:http://www.philosophia.cl/biblioteca/aristoteles/Arist%F3teles%20-%20Sobre%20la%20interpretaci%F3n.pdf

San Agustín (1947) El maestro. B.A.C, Madrid.

Eagleton, T. (2006) La estética como ideología. Editorial Trotta.

Rorty, R. (1991) Contingencia, ironía y solidaridad. Paidós.

Van Dijk, Teun A. (1983) La ciencia del texto. Paidós.