Page 122 - Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Language

Truth and Meaning
view is a result of the strong hold the abstract objec- tivist language conception has had on modern linguis- tic thought. Most workers in this tradition share (implicitly or explicitly) the idea that the essence of language is to represent some intellectual structure; thus, they reduce communication to a subordinate place amongst the possible functions of language.
Some linguistic schools have advocated a more communication-relevant approach to language; here, one could name the Prague School, and different ver- sions of linguistic functionalism. This low status attri- buted to communication is similarly challenged by different pragmatic approaches to language, as well as by language-relevant research in related disciplines such as sociology, poetics, psychology, or anthro- pology. Only some of the more important and coher- ent attempts of such communication-relevant approaches to language will be mentioned here.
3.1 Soviet Semiotic Dialogism
In the pre-Stalin era of Soviet intellectual life, a group of scholars emerged with a more or less common view of language, cognition, and communication; the language philosopher V . N. V oloshinov, the psy- chologistL.S.Vygotsky,andtheliterarycriticM.M. Bakhtin. All these scholars launched an attack on the basic ideas of abstract objectivism. For political reasons, it took a long time before their ideas reached the western world, but since the late 1960s, their approach to humanistic studies has come to play an increasingly important role in a great number of humanistic disciplines such as psychology, sociology, poetics, philosophy, semiotics, and linguistics.
The basic idea of these scholars is that language is essentially dialogic. This dialogicity is not to be mistaken for a possible external, instrumental use of language; it is dialogic in its most radical sense, i.e., that of the inner dialectic quality of the language sign. The addresser and the addressee are integrated as part of the nature of language. Language never exists as a uni-functional, closed system: rather, it is a process of communication. This process is furthermore char- acterized by the notions of multiaccentuality, het- erogeneity, polyphony, intertextuality, and in particular 'voicing', all referring to the social nature of language. In communication, language never appears as single-voiced: the situation, the tradition, the power relations between the communicators, and so on, all place their mark in the message. Thus, language really is this multivoiced message or speech process.
The Soviet dialogists see the nature of language as fundamentally social. The study of the content plane of linguistic messages becomes part of the study of ideology, whereas the object of study of the expression plane are the so-called speech genres. Consequently, even cognition is interpreted as a communication pro- cess, or, as it is called: 'inner speech.' Cognition or
'thought' is only possible through language; language is this multiaccentuated interaction process.
It remains to be seen whether the ideas of the Soviet dialogists can stimulate the traditional study of languages and language in the same way as they have influenced psychology and text linguistics. But one linguistic theory has emerged which partly seems to have been inspired by this school: namely the theory of enunciation and polyphony, developed above all by the French linguist Oswald Ducrot. This theory not only focuses on the self-referential aspects of language, such as deictic elements and shifters, but also on the fact that each message may have more than one source, and therefore may represent several points of view. These qualities are grammaticalized in language, for instance in the system of modalities. One consequence of the theory is that the monolithic notion of the addresser's integrity is suspended.
3.2 The Prague School and Functionalism
The Prague School was a linguistic school which did not limit its study of language to isolated utterances in so-called 'normal' situations. Quite the contrary: its focus was on a number of different types of human communication where language was used as a tool, such as literature and film. The school's basic rel- evance for the study of communication lies in the Prague linguists' development of a process theory of syntax, based on the notions of theme and rheme. Theme and rheme refer to the different linguistic qual- ities in the message which, in the communication process, signal already given meaning as 'theme,' and introduce new meaning as 'rheme.'
An even more important contribution to a com- municative approach to language study is the Prague School's development of different taxonomies of so- called communicative functions. These taxonomies play an important role in Trubetzkoy's phonological theory. Another linguist (who is often associated with the Prague school), Andre Martinet, also challenges the traditional view of the basic function of language as representation. To Martinet, language is an instru- ment for communication. Martinet's stance appears to stem (at least in part) from his view on language as serving the need for mutual understanding. This 'sociological' attitude may also be prompted by Mar- tinet's interest in what he calls the 'vocal basis' of language and by his studies in diachronic phonology. This basic communicative function of language could, e.g., explain why certain phonemes do not merge, and why the distinctive values of a language system are retained, even though its substance is fundamentally changed.
Like the Soviet dialogists, but perhaps in a less radical fashion, the Praguians refuse to reduce the essence of language's functions to intellectual rep- resentation. To them, language is a polyfunctional potential: its different functions are grammaticalized
100