Logic and rhetoric

Hey

I hope everyone had a relaxing reading week. I for one was glad to have the extra time to play catch up with all the information I've had to ingest over a short period of time from all courses. So digestion was something to appreciate for me on the week off.
I just wanted to quickly add that if you have not already seen the new dvd release of "Thank You For Smoking", please take the time and do so. Its only an hour and thirty minutes long and provides nice examples of "Rhetoric" and "Logical thinking". Among the cast are Aaron Eckhart, Maria Bello, Sam Elliot, Katie Holmes(wacko Tom Cruises wife), Rob Lowe, William H. Macy, and Robert Duvall. So check it out if you enjoy satirical comedies.

See you in class
Mike T

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the medium

After our last tutorial, I found it interesting when we were talking about the advertisements that we are subjected to on a daily basis. Whether it be through radio, billboards, television, or magazine/newspaper. The messages that are presented and the audiences that can use these messages as learning tools to develop there ideas of how they feel our societies operate. I find that the advertisements, not all, try to create a fine line between reality and fiction.
Done my babble

MikeT

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This week's reading:

Folks,

Apparently some folks have had trouble getting to the website for this week's reading. Try clicking this link, or cutting & pasting it:

http://www.hcc.hawaii.edu/~pine/Book2/chap1EL-2.htm

Cheers & Best,

Michael

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Kits 3 and 4

Hey
In class maybe we can expand and discuss McLuhan's term "empirical level of consciousness" and how it relates to his understanding of rhetoric and the difference between content and medium. Any ideas/ comments would be helpful. Also, is there any significance to Wilkins system of categorizing words and expressions today? I'm just curious about further developments in his study, i guess.

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Still on Saussure

Semiology- in the dictionary it is defined as the science of signs in general.
When thinking about this, one of the signs that come to mind is our ability to stop, or proceed with caution. Its a sign which, to my knowledge, is respected in somewhat global proportions. Take our stop sign. The shape of the sign seems to hold its form throughout North America, South America, Europe. One thing that definetly changes, depending solely on language, is the word on the sign. Furthermore, another attribute to this sign which seems universal is the colour code. It is always red. This colour, which is used to caution us to stop, is also used to focus our undivided attention to danger. We can continue with other colours or shapes which create a common langauge in our worlds. Green, yellow, etc. Why the upside down triangle to alert you to yield, and the colour yellow. Does it alert your neurological sensors differently then orange? Well, thats my babble
Michael. T

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This week's post

This week's readings were in no way as difficult as last week's, thankfully. There is nothing particularly interesting to discuss on the first article about rhetoric. The article was clear, and easy to read, although I was not aware that rhetoric was ever viewed as an arguementative method. I had always thought that it was just a way of speaking well. For the second article "The analytical language of john Wilkins", I found that it made a good point about no word being less or more expressive of something then any other word. Other then that, I really have nothing important to say about the readings. They were interesting, but there is really nothing to discuss about the first, and the second reading is pretty much the same thing we've been discussing for the past few weeks. Anywho I'm off, see you guys tomorrow

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Saussure Reading

Well I certainly hope that this is the most difficult reading we will have to get through this year, it was quite a lot of content to attempt to wade through. One thought that I kept on coming back to when reading Saussure, was how iron clad he made language sound to be. Granted, I agree with his statements such as language is both past and present at the same time, and individual and social. If we all spoke our own different language, we would never be able to have a functioning society. While I was reading about how language and symbols are inhereted, I couldn't help but remember a book I read once (title and author forgotten, this was many a year ago) about a little girl whose father was a scientist. He conditioned his daughter from birth to speak in opposites of the english language (up was down, father was mother etc.). It was interesting to read about the struggles that she had trying to communicate even on the most basic level. I don't know if this is just me, but the concept of language being a strict set of rules in a society is mildly scary. Language has never really been something I've given much thought to (atleast in relation to its origins or meaning), but how Saussure wrote of the strict and rigorous way humans adhere to their language makes me wonder about the freedom of thoughts and expression if the very way we are able to express our thoughts is so conformed to society's rules. It seems that language both frees us to express our thoughts, but traps us in the way we can explain them.

Those were just some of my thoughts on the readings for tomorrow. I'll see you guys in class tomorrow!
Jessica Hanlon

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"The Object of Study"

I found the article, "The Object of Study," to be very interesting. I didn't completely understand everything, but I plan on reading the article again, hopefully that will help me understand it better.

-Nicole

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Mike Tibs posting

I'm finding it hard to understand the definition for semiology. It states that, "all meaningful sounds behave like linguistic signs?" Am I the only one who is having troubles with making sense of Saussure? Any feed back on the readings or the posting from Michael Morse?


Mike T

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Michael's Notes on Saussure

Dear Folks, 
  As my first contribution to the blog, I'm posting my notes on Saussure. 
This is one of the hardest texts we'll read all year, so I thought these notes might be helpful.

Cheers,

Michael

Saussure NOTES

Intro Chapter III §1

- What linguistics studies is not self-evident, because each and every word does not just mean different things, but is different things: an idea, a sound, an element of history

- At first glance, the question “what is a word?” must be answered: it depends

- Speech sounds are not independent of thoughts; in that sense, they are not “things”

- Language is always both individual and social; these two aspects are inseparable from each other

- Language always involves both a present and a past; language does not have a history “and” a present usage; these two are also inseparable; linguistic history is always being made; it is made every time someone speaks the language

- Solution to dilemma is to study linguistic structure: a “social product of our language faculty”; a body of conventions adopted by society to use the language faculty; the principle of order to all the different aspects of language;

- It is not clear whether language is a natural function of the vocal apparatus; it is clear that no one language is more natural than another

- [Key term:] Articulation, the division of sound into discrete syllables, words, sentences; essential to the process of making meaning; we make sense of the whole (whatever idea is expressed) by making sense of the parts, and understanding their relation to each other; one essential definition, though not the only one: language is articulated sound

§2

- in order to express concepts (or ideas), an individual speech act requires a circuit between two people, involving both (articulated) speaking and (comprehending) listening

- the physiological and psychological facts are also part of a social phenomenon: the words used to express concepts are the same between the members of the language-speaking group [“wonderful!” is used in all kinds of ways—but not to describe a toothache, except sarcastically; no one uses the expression “dirt path” to describe Highway 401, again unless they’re kidding]; the shared words are symptoms of a shared concept, which in turn becomes a shared word, used to express the shared concept; words and language are where we express our agreement and shared experience; none of us call Highway 401 a “dirt road” because that isn’t the way any of us experience it; hence we use “the same signs linked to the same concepts”

- read FdS p 30, right hand column: the totality of stored impressions is the totality of (and called) language

- language is the totality of shared impressions and concepts, independent of (or beyond) the individual utterances and speech acts of individuals, which Saussure calls speech [which includes written speech acts]

[more on language structure:]

1. It is external to the individual, who is powerless to control it; if you want to say ‘sheep’ and mean ‘car,’ no one will understand you; more importantly, no one will follow your example; it will be even worse if you start to say “the” three or four times before every word; the convention is to say “the” just once, and it will be impossible for you to change it

2. Language struucure can be studied independently, both of individual speech acts, and of specific historical conditions; in other words, no one individual or situation defines a language, and its structure can be studied independent of them all, even if it is no longer spoken

3./4. Structure is sufficiently consistent and tangible that it can be studied, because even though the patterns formed by all the speech acts are very diverse, they are coherent enough that they can be studied like objects; a linguist can study words, just as an astronomer studies stars and constellations, or a geologist studies mountains and rocks

§3



- A [particular] language has a key role in social life; “language” (in general) does not; the language capacity of human beings is an abstraction; we cannot point out or explain exactly what it is, but only look to the way it is used in particular cases

- There are two kinds of particular case: individual speech acts, and the social totality of these acts, the structure of them all, which is English as opposed to French, as opposed to German

- Language is an abstraction; what I am saying right now is concrete, and so is the English language



Part ONE Chapter I §1 – how linguistic signs actually work

- if we assume that words (simply) represent things, then we assume that concepts are independent of words, because ideas already exist, and language simply comes along and provides names or labels for what we already understand

- linguistic signs link concepts and sound patterns – not brain waves and objects, but experiences (sound pattern and concepts are both ‘experiences’)

- sound pattern, because the actual sound isn’t required, or essential; many distinct sounds can have the same sound pattern, such as child’s voice, a non-native speaker, a TV star, a drunk; recognition of the pattern is what creates meaning, not (just) recognition of the sound

- A sign is the conjunction of sound pattern and concept; a stop sign automatically tells us, signals ‘stop’ to us; if we see drivers ahead of us stop at an intersection (and don’t see a traffic light), we automatically assume there’s a stop sign, we make the association; even a crude drawing of a tree has the same effect, because the association works the same way, that is, the same combination of sound pattern and concept

- “But ‘stop’ means I do something, such as stop my car or bicycle; ‘tree’ doesn’t do that” – well, then ‘tree’ is a different kind of concept, one that does not involve a specific instruction; “kinds of words” are kinds of concepts, different ways to use signs in our social lives

§2

- the sign is arbitrary; it could be any sound pattern that, through the history of usage, a society/culture/language-user group agrees to use as a concept

- Is the stuff you grill to make a sandwich “cheese,” “fromage,” or “Käse”? It depends on where you are and which language you’re speaking, and only on that; none of these words is any closer to “the truth” than the others

- As Saussure says, there is no internal connection of signal to signification; the ‘external’ connection is linguistic structure, the history of the (particular) language; it is external precisely because it already existed before you and I were born; we learned it; and is there anything more important that we did in our lives to become who we are?

- Even signals which appear to be natural, such as ‘tick-tock’ for a ticking clock (an imitative sound), or bowing low to a superior authority, like an act of physiological submission, is only meaningful because it is a learned convention; unless someone understands that convention, that language, it isn’t meaningful

- Semiology means that all meaningful sounds behave like linguistic signs, or are a part of language

- “Arbitrary” does not mean that the sign can mean whatever anyone wants it to mean; it means that signs are chosen through the process linguistic history, and have no natural or absolute basis; cheese, fromage, and Käse are characteristic sounds of their languages, i.e., they “sound like” English, French, German words, and are consistent with the sound patterns of other words in those languages; beyond that, they have no special relation to what we put on sandwiches, in particular no natural or automatic relation; had the history of the language been different, so would the words

- [famous] example: in English, when the animal is walking around, we call it a cow [from German Kuh] or swine [from German Schwein]; when it’s on the table, as food, we call it beef or pork [from French boeuf and pork]; the change happened after the French invasion of England in 1066, after which all the ruling nobility were French, and so could afford to eat the meat; the English peasants who tended the animals could not, and so used the (older) words for the animals in the living form, which was how they knew them

- The fact that some words have sound patterns that resemble what they describe as a concept (such as “gurgle” or “screech” in English) doesn’t change the arbitrary nature of the sign, because other languages may not use a related sound for that concept; it’s never universal, and meaning always depends on the history of adopted conventions

- Exclamations, too, vary from language to language, and over time; it is not natural or inevitable that someone says “Ow!” or “Ouch!” when they bang their thumb with a hammer, any more than it’s natural they say—as I would, in that case--@!#$$#, %%$%#@&^!! *&*^%+$#@ !#@ %^$#@$!!

§3

- Signs are temporal; they take place in linear time, unfold one part at a time; we understand them by [Key term:] synthesis, by mentally combining the parts into wholes, and the wholes into larger wholes; as we hear or read them, syllables combine into words, words into phrases, phrases into sentences, paragraphs, stories, essays; articulation is the process of generating these parts in time; whether audibly (in speech) or visually (in writing), the temporal aspect of the process is equally essential

Chapter I §1 – Variability & Change

- Once a signal is chosen by a linguistic community, it cannot be changed, except by the community; since it is community (or communally) based, the process is a not a matter of free choice or contract (“hey, fellers! Why don’t we call them dumb birds “pigeons,” eh?); a language is always an inheritance from the past

- No society ever knows (its) language otherwise; hence, the origin of language is a fairly minor question; for practical purposes, it has “always been like this”

- What we inherit is above all linguistic structure: even if through speech acts we add words and expressions to “English” [with a capital ‘E’], the rules of its grammar (and spelling) change very slowly, over centuries—if at all

1. Language cannot be changed by conscious choice of the community (or individuals within the community), because it isn’t based on rational consensus in the first place; “the sign is arbitrary” also means that changing the system is difficult, because it is elusive

2. The working variables of a language are very small—27 letters in English, and about 90 different vocal sounds in total—but the combinations of them as signs are virtually limitless; again, that makes fundamental change difficult

3. The system is extremely complex; just to list all of the rules of spoken and written English would be a huge undertaking; it is hard to change for that reason, too

4. Collective inertia resists all innovations – everyone uses language constantly; even in a small community, the number of speech acts in a day is in the hundreds of thousands; changing a system so heavily used “on the fly” is difficult; hence “continuity with the past restricts freedom of choice”

- the sign is arbitrary, but fixed by tradition—and there is nothing else that “fixes” signs, gives them stability, except tradition

§2

- While the system of linguistic structure, anchored in the past of custom and tradition, is extremely slow to change, the language itself is not, in fact can change rapidly, because the relation between signal and signification is relatively unstable

- Changes in social customs can bring changes in such relations; the industrial revolution brought new words, and new senses for old ones (such as “work,” “job,” “task”); so did the computer revolution

- The sheer number of times that words are spoken every day tends, as we saw, to make changes to the system difficult; but, through usage, it makes changes to the signs probable, or at least very flexible; the ceaseless evolution of slang is a good illustration

- Hence “a language” and a linguistic community are inseparable; they define themselves and each other through (historical) time



 

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