Scribd
Upload
558 views5 pages

Ishtla Singh - Language, Thought and Representation

Saussure theorized that language is a representational system that varies across languages, with each language cutting up reality in unique and arbitrary ways. Langue refers to the abstract rules and units of a language shared by a speech community, while parole describes individual language use. A sign in Saussure's model consists of a signifier (sound pattern) and signified (concept), with the link between them being arbitrary. Sapir and Whorf proposed that language influences thought and that different linguistic categories encode different worldviews. How reality is represented through a language can both reflect and reinforce the ideologies of its speech community.

Uploaded by

Jessa
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
558 views5 pages

Ishtla Singh - Language, Thought and Representation

Saussure theorized that language is a representational system that varies across languages, with each language cutting up reality in unique and arbitrary ways. Langue refers to the abstract rules and units of a language shared by a speech community, while parole describes individual language use. A sign in Saussure's model consists of a signifier (sound pattern) and signified (concept), with the link between them being arbitrary. Sapir and Whorf proposed that language influences thought and that different linguistic categories encode different worldviews. How reality is represented through a language can both reflect and reinforce the ideologies of its speech community.

Uploaded by

Jessa
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 5

2.

1 Introduction
2.2 Saussure and language as a representational system
 Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913) is perhaps best known as the deviser of structuralism.
 Saussure theorised that speakers of different languages engage in an arbitrary division of reality; that is,
that ‘different languages cut up reality in different ways.
 Every language can be said to be a particular system of representation that mirrors
Langue, which is ‘our [innate] knowledge of the systematic correspondences between sound and meaning which
make up our language. (Including the knowledge of what utterances are possible . . . and what utterances are not)

Words such as tree, or


tomorrow, or summer or elephant. As soon as you hear or read these, you ‘know’ what concepts they refer to.
 You also know, again without explicit explanation, that they are acceptable English words – their sound or
letter combinations (in speech and writing respectively) are all possible.
In essence, langue comprises an ‘abstract system of units and rules’ (McMahon 1994: 25) that members of a speech
community subconsciously share.
Parole, the actual use of language in both
speech and writing.
 Whereas the ‘hardwiring’ of langue
is shared by a speech community,
parole encompasses the individual
use of language
 Saussure’s theory of the linguistic
sign elucidates both of these
principles. Firstly, the notion of the
linguistic sign formalizes what we
have so far been calling ‘sound and
meaning correspondence’.

Saussure terms the sound sequence which makes up a label a signifier, and the meaning or concept associated with
it the signified.
 the actual sign is not one or the other of its component parts but instead the association that binds them
together
 Saussure did maintain that the link between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary. In other words, there
is no pressing reason why the concept of a tree, for example, has to be symbolized by the exact sequence
of sounds or letters in t-r-e-e. There is also no reason why either might not change over time, and a The
example;
Werewolf – sinister transformation of a person into a wolf-like monster
Wolf man – someone who has wolfish characteristics but remains essentially a person
The level of langue, signs do not exist in isolation, but in systems of associate relationships
- We can truly get at the essence of a sign only by contextualizing it in its current system of use
- The subtle layering of meaning a sign accrues through its use
Example:
Paki - a term of racist abuse in the UK denoting someone who appears to have ethnic affiliations with the Indian
subcontinent.
*exists in a system of associative relationships with signs which negatively label other ethnic groups.
*Someone outside the speech community in which these signs and their associative systems are current will not
necessarily have the same ‘understanding’ of them.
Example - some of the racist signs of the author’s native langue were very different from those he encountered.
Meaning, signs such as paki does not exist in their language, and the author’s creole language contained signs such
as re and dougla which had no currency in Britain.
 The importance of considering signs within their systems of use is further emphasized when we compare them
across languages.
Example – mutton (English) - signified cooked meat of sheep
Mouton (French)
Sheep – denotes a live animal (associative relationships)
 Thus considering linguistic signs in the context of their systems is crucial to understanding how speech
communities ‘cut up reality’
INDIVIDUAL LANGUAGES – made up of LINGUISTIC SIGNS, STRUCTURAL PRINCIPLES
 Grammar – structural rules which allow us to create utterance that are meaningful in our native language; this
varies from language to language
- Thus, the arbitrary division of reality that Saussure theorized is embodied in different languages through the
interaction of the grammar and linguistic signs of each.
The representations of ‘reality’ offered by the resources of each language are not just reflections of particular
ways of looking at the world; they also reinforce those perceptions for their users.

2.3 SAPIR-WHORF THEORIES


 Ancient Greeks, scholars have argued for a causative link between culture and language
 Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee
- Gave impetus to the theory that culturally based ‘ways of speaking’ as a basis for the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
TWO PARTS
1. Linguistic relativity theorizes that the languages of different cultures comprise distinct systems of
representation which are not necessarily equivalent.
2. Linguistic determinism proposes that a language not only encodes certain ‘angles on reality’ but also
affects the thought processes of its speakers.
*Whorf – language is linked to ‘unconscious habitual thought’ and that there is ‘at least some causal influence from
language categories to non-verbal cognition’
- every language is a vast pattern-system, different from others, in which are culturally ordained the forms and
categories by which the personality not only communicates, but also analyzes nature, notices or neglects types of
relationship and phenomena, channels his reasoning, and builds the house of his consciousness.
- Relationship between linguistic representation, cognition and behavior
Example – Gasoline drums - Empty Gasoline Drums
- Languages pluralize nouns differently (John Lucy)
Example- Yacatec Maya spoken in south-eastern Mexico
1. Animate, discrete entities
2. Non-animate, discrete objects
3. Tangible substances with malleable form
Ex; count and mass nouns
 Grammatical Gender assigned to nouns (Boroditsky)
Example – key – feminine (Spanish)
- Masculine (German)
 The use of grammatical gender conclude that that it plays a part in the qualities encoded to relevant linguistic
signs – ‘angles of telling’ are possible within the resources of one language.
2.4 One language, Many Worlds
- How you name it links to how you perceive it.
Carol Cohn (1987), who wrote of her first-hand experiences of the technostrategic language
- Nukespeak community’s ideology reflected and reinforced that nuclear weapon is safe
- Positive reality about the nuclear power as natural as the alternative belief that it is not
IDEOLOGY – the taken-for-granted assumptions, beliefs, and value-systems which are shared collectively by social
groups (Simpson 1993:3)
 Abstraction and euphemism – highly used in technostrategic language
Counter value attacks obscure the destruction of cities, and collateral damage neatly hides the resultant human
corpses. Example – certain nuclear devices are labelled as clean bombs directing perceptions away from the
dreadful results of their high energy blast.
 Sexual metaphors, domestic imagery, and religious terminology
Example: Penetration aids - advisers of ‘releasing 70 to 80 percent of our megatonnage in one orgasmic whump
Nuclear weapons were ‘irresistible, because you get more bang for the buck’
Patting the missile also means rendering it familiar and harmless. (Intimacy and sexual power)
 Domestic Imagery
o Christmas tree farms - launch-ready missiles
o Marry up and busess deliver
 Religious terminology
o Trinity – first atomic bomb
 Nukespeak world also refer to themselves as the nuclear priesthood, an ‘extraordinary implicit statement about
who, or rather what, has become God
 Overall, Cohn believes that the ‘angle of telling’ embodied in such modes of representation makes it easier to
ignore the human cost of nuclear war.
 Nukespeak- perspective of the creators and controllers of nuclear weapons: the worldview it encodes is not that
of the victim.
This is the transitivity model, used in the analysis of utterances to show ‘how speakers encode in language their
mental picture of reality and how they account for their experience of the world’ (Simpson, ibid. 89).
Utterances: 1. process, which is typically expressed by a verb
2. Participants: the participant who is the ‘doer’ of the process represented by the verb is known as the
actor; the goal is the entity or person affected by the process
3. Circumstances associated with the process provide extra information about the process,
ACTIVE AND PASSIVE VOICE
 active voice, utterances typically follow the structure actor + process + goal.
 In passive voice, on the other hand, it is the goal which becomes foregrounded, and the actor is moved to
the end goal + process + actor
Thus, the combination of structural and sign choices is integral to the creation of certain representations.
E.g. newspaper headlines
 Nominalistion – summarizes and establishes an immediate context
The times – formal broadsheet; daily mirror – tabloid
 Newspaper are written by people with different perspectives in reality and how the world unfolds
- Viewpoints consciously and unconsciously become encoded linguistically and readers are influenced
- Language is not transparent, objective medium for communication but instead a projection of propositions
and perspectives as a way of communicating attitudes and assumptions.

SUMMARY
Language
- Unique and arbitrary system of representation which cuts up reality
- can reflect and reinforce ideologies
- Not used in a context-less vacuum, a host of discourse contexts which are impregnated with the ideology
of social systems and institutions
-can be used by socially powerful groups perpetuate their ideology (colonizers)
- We fond to see it as natural, obvious and common sense thus not interrogating
- can be used to naturalise us into accepting certain ideas about ‘the way things are and the way things
should be’. We must learn to challenge its representations and, as Sapir once stated, fight its implications.

You might also like