ABSTRACT
There are many approaches to language. From a common-sense standpoint, language might be taken as a vehicle for the communication of thoughts. Hence, meaning and its ‘transmission’ is essential to a definition of what language is. This view would conceive of a subject having thoughts, and in turn expressing them through language in the form of speech. Taken in this way, particular languages might be produced by particular cultures, but it would not necessarily be the case that thoughts are culturally specific (the issue of meaning, in other words, might turn on questions of human nature, on psychology, physiology, etc.). In turn, meaning, on this conception, would be primarily a matter of the intentions of speakers. This view is open to question from a number of perspectives, for example, approaches associated with postmodernism, structuralism and post-structuralism. On such accounts as these, language produces meaning not through the assertion by a language-independent speaker of a proposition which expresses an intention independently of the language used, but it is only in virtue of the existence of language (understood as a system of signs, or as a semantic process which is ontologically independent of the constitution of subjectivity) that there are such things as ‘speakers’ and ‘intentions’. In turn, speakers are regarded as being constituted within language, and hence are not taken as ontologically prior to it. The tradition of analytic philosophy has offered a number of accounts of language and meaning which simply do not rely upon a self-conscious model of subjectivity as constituting their foundation, but point towards the logical and structural preconditions of languages as being of importance in our understanding of such issues; while Lacan’s model of psychoanalysis envisages a structural link between the constitution of the unconscious and language (i.e. he claims the unconscious is structured like a language). Equally important to any account of language are the notions of
representation and reference. Thus, we can ask such questions as, ‘Does language represent the world to us, or construct it for us?’ or ‘Does language succeed in referring to entities which are ‘‘non-linguistic’’?’ Such questions involve the consideration of issues related to the areas of metaphysics, ontology and epistemology. For example, Derrida’s account of the metaphysical tradition of the West conceives of it as embodying a set of presuppositions about the nature of meaning and intention. Such presuppositions include the attitude that meaning is a matter of the ‘presence’ of speakers and that ‘writing’, in turn, is secondary to living speech in the hierarchy of meaning:
speakers produce meaning, but need writing to preserve the living presence of meaning in their absence. Likewise, the view that subjectivity is the source of meaning presupposes a particular ontology of the subject (namely, that the subject is capable, in virtue of what it is, of agency with regard to the generation of meaning); while questions about the nature of knowledge (i.e. epistemological questions) are also questions concerned with language with regard to (i) its capability to refer to ‘non-linguistic’ experience or alternatively (ii) the linguistic norms or conventions which stipulate what counts as knowledge within any given community of speakers. If questions of normativity and community come to the fore, then any account of language must pay attention to the cultural factors involved in the construction of meaning. Whether it is possible to talk about ‘Language’ (with a capital ‘L’)
at all in a general sense is perhaps open to question. It has certainly been the case that many theories (e.g. structuralism) have at least an implicit investment in the belief that there are characteristics that can be described which are universally applicable to all languages. Only on the basis of such a view was structuralism able to lay claim to its status as a ‘scientific’ description of language. However, ‘Language’ in this sense is perhaps a conception which is bound up with problems of metaphysics, for what is referred to when one uses the word ‘Language’ in this way cannot be demonstrated or shown in the way in which the particular referents contained within a proposition can be. Another instance of such a conception would be the phrase ‘universe’: the referent here is a totality which cannot be shown, not least because the very act of attempting to show it would itself have to be part of what is shown. Likewise, talking of ‘Language’ at the very least presupposes that one can allude to a totality, of which the proposition which refers to this totality must itself be a part since it is linguistic (a problem related to Russell’s aporia-cf. grand narrative).
