Linguistic Society of America

Review
Reviewed Work(s): The Said and the Unsaid: Mind, Meaning, and Culture by Stephen A.
Tyler
Review by: Ranjit Chatterjee
Source: Language, Vol. 59, No. 2 (Jun., 1983), pp. 423-427
Published by: Linguistic Society of America
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/413588
Accessed: 30-03-2017 15:25 UTC

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 REVIEWS 423

GOLD,
GOLD, DAVID
DAVIDL.L.1981.
1981.Jewish
Jewish intralinguistics
intralinguistics
as as
a field
a field
of study.
of study.
Internationa
Internat
of
of the
the Sociology
Sociologyof ofLanguage
Language 30.31-46.
30.31-46.
PAPER,
PAPER, HERBERT
HERBERTH. H.1978
1978(ed.)
(ed.)
Jewish
Jewishlanguages:
languages: Theme
Theme andand
variations.
variations.
Cam
MA: Association for Jewish Studies.
PRAGER, LEONARD. 1981. Ma'amad hamarkiv hayidi bemilona'ut ha'ivrit. Iyunim b
valSanut uvesemiotika, ed. by Lawrence David et al., 195-200. Jerusalem: Ministry
of Education.
RABIN, CHAIM. 1981. What constitutes a Jewish language? International Journal of the
Sociology of Language 30.19-28.
WEINREICH, MAX. 1956a. The Jewish languages of Romance stock and their relation to
earliest Yiddish. Romance Philology 9.403-28.
- . 1956b. Yiddish, Knaanic, Slavic: The basic relationships. For Roman Jakobson,
ed. by Morris Halle et al., 622-32. The Hague: Mouton.
--. 1973. Gesixte fun der yidiser sprax, 1-4. New York: YIVO.
WEXLER, PAUL. 1981. Jewish interlinguistics: Facts and conceptual framework. Lg.
57.99-149.

[Received 24 March 1982.]

The said and the unsaid: Mind, meaning, and culture. By STEPHEN A. TYLER.
New York: Academic Press, 1978. Pp. xii, 487.
Reviewed by RANJIT CHATTERJEE, National University of Singapore
Of a man who complained that he found it 'impossible to avoid upsetting
words in the meanings they possessed', the 18th century wit and Professor of
Physics at Gottingen, Georg Lichtenberg, observed tartly: 'He has got it into
his head that certain words have a certain meaning which they must perma-
nently retain. I ask you, Who will stop me taking a word here and a meaning
there and combining them? ... Clearly this prejudice is due to lack of contact
with the great world, which is the only world there is' (Stern 1959:298). Humpty
Dumpty used glory to mean 'a nice knock-down argument'. The idea is as old
as Adam: 'And whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the
name thereof' (Gen. 11:19). Rilke thought that every word in a poem-even
und, oder, or das-was semantically unique; and Malinowski (on one inter-
pretation, as Tyler notes, 186), felt that a word never had the same meaning
on two occasions.
T's book confronts the basic issues implied in these facts. His main concer
is 'the mathesis of thought' about language in recent linguistics-i.e. formalism
which T identifies with the thesis that 'SPEAKING REPRESENTS UNCONSCIOUS
KNOWLEDGE OF AN ABSTRACT SYSTEM OF CONVENTIONAL SIGNS AND RULES WITH

WHICH TO CONSTRUCT SENTENCES AND CONSTRUE MEANINGS' (xi, 5)

this concern, T looks at language from viewpoints provided by ph
hermeneutics, Wittgenstein, and (in passing) Foucault and East
phies, while remaining in dialog with 'mainstream' activity in ling
remark here on six linguistic themes to which he makes important
contributions, and then relate the volume's intellectual world to
of thinking about language, at which T only hints.

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424 LANGUAGE, VOLUME 59, NUMBER 2 (1983)

The laconic title impinges upon practically all the human sciences and/or
arts, especially anthropology, philosophy, psychology, and literary criticism.
But language, seen as a rhetorical instrument, is T's overriding concern. Its
study, therefore, cannot and should not be an obsession with the 'scientific
explanation of language-of language as an object alone', but rather an inte-
grating, unifying 'interpretation of thought and culture for which language is
both object and vehicle' (xi). This view is fleshed out later with supporting
references to Barthes, Ricoeur, and the hermeneutic method (e.g. pp. 378-89).
Formalism is targeted by T ab initio: 'My thesis is simple. The intellectual
history of the 19th and 20th centuries is essentially a chronicle of the mathesis
of thought. The movement toward mathematization begun by Galileo culmi-
nates in the 20th century in the formalization of language, of the vehicle of
thought itself ... nowhere is the intellectual poverty of formalism more clearly
revealed' (xi; cf. Steiner 1975:202). But T oversimplifies here. First, the proper
object of his attack is not 'the formalization of language', but THE FORMALI-
ZATION OF THOUGHT ABOUT OR DESCRIPTION OF LANGUAGE. Second, the 20th cen-
tury has produced not just the Russells, Carnaps, and Chomskys, but also
Heideggers, Husserls, Wittgensteins, Ricoeurs, Foucaults, and Derridas; these
are all far from being formalizers of anything, and T makes legitimate use of
their work. The interesting question, therefore, is: Why did linguistic semantics
derive from the former rather than the latter group, although both dealt with
natural language? The answer may lie in the techno-economic predilections of
our age; while T does not directly formulate this, the reader may construe it
from his text.
T integrates his attack on formalism with at least five topics that should be
of vital concern to all linguists: metaphor, linguistic relativity, child language,
anti-essentialist (or non-reductionist) philosophies of language, and a poly-
dimensional view of meaning. Consistent with his view of language as primarily
a rhetorical instrument, T calls metaphor 'perhaps the most fundamental proc-
ess in language and thought' (315). In this he links himself with Vico (cf. Steiner,
75), whom the deconstructionists also credit with the recognition of the meta-
phoric or the poetic as the primary mode of language (cf. Derrida 1976:271-2,
349-50).1 Undervaluation of metaphor, and of figure in general, has been a
failing of modern linguistics and of transformational grammar in particular (de-
spite George Lakoffs recent interest in the subject). With Max Black to support
him, T sees substitution as 'only one of the three ways metaphors work. The
others are comparison and symbolic transformation' (316). Metaphors are cre-
ative in a more dynamic sense than the Chomskyan, not being producible or
predictable from any stable set of semantic features (327). This last point was
made in Bolinger 1965 but still needs repeating.
In a scant three pages on linguistic relativity, T produces evidence from the
Dravidian language Koya, which does not have embedded relative clauses,

' For corroboration from an unexpected source, cf. Quine (1979:160): 'It is a mistake, then, to
think of linguistic usage as literalistic in its main body and metaphorical in its trimming. Metaphor,
or something like it, governs both the growth of language and our acquisition of it.'

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 REVIEWS 425

against the transformationalist thesis that the 'fundamental' syntact

of 'deep structure' are available in all languages (69). He holds tha
amples absolve Whorf of the charge that only his manner of represen
sentences in exotic-looking translations made them seem like odd
comprehensible thoughts. By saying outright that everyday language
animals in the manner of the Chinese encyclopaedia described by Bo
made famous by Foucault), rather than as formal taxonomies do (247)
the depth of his sympathies with linguistic relativity.2
Some scattered but important remarks on child language are of a p
T's hermeneutic approach. He takes as basic the child's elastic use an
pretation in context of simple words like orange (to mean, e.g., The
orange on the table; That's orange-colored; I want an orange, etc
and babysitter will speak-and must be spoken to-differently, and wi
to context. Baby is soon aware of this: 'The most significant aspect o
acquisition of language then is not the learning of a grammar, but
use interpretative procedures. When parents expand a child's ungram
utterances into fully grammatical forms, they are treating his utte
indices of underlying sentences and are not just teaching him to sp
matically; they are also teaching him by example to use the documentary
method of interpretation' (421). As Sampson (1980:61-4) has shown, the chang-
ing of interpretations by context and on the basis of new information about the
world is typical not just of the child, but of anyone who has not stopped
learning-i.e. everyone.
T operates with what can be called an anti-essentialist view of meaning,
drawn from the sources already mentioned. References to the unconscious,
rare for a linguist, enrich the intellectual ooze in which a new linguistics might
be conceived. Below I describe and extend T's hints toward this.
The book contains 18 references to Wittgenstein (though only one makes the index)-who, along
with Foucault and Derrida, belongs in spirit with the 'postmodern' thinkers of the West. Although
rightly calling Saussure 'suspect' today (465), T does not introduce his linguist readers to, say, the
deconstruction (re-reading) of Saussure in Derrida. T does refer to 'the great meditative traditions'
of the East (84), 'all of which emphasize a kind of internal silence and impose an end to thought's
ceaseless reflection on itself and what is not.' Also very Eastern are T's reflections on Western
science:

'All of the sciences of man signify and arise from the fracturing of an organic whole; all
promulgate themselves as authentic replacements for it; and all substitute a spurious analytic

2 According to Foucault (1970:xv), 'a certain Chinese encyclopedia' mentioned by Jorge Luis
Borges is supposed to have divided animals into '(a) belonging to the Emperor, (b) embalmed, (c)
tame, (d) suckling pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classi-
fication, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (1) et cetera, (m)
having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies'. [Editor's note:
Foucault does not specify where this quotation occurs in the works of Borges; however, with the
help of Rub6n Benitez, I was able to find it in the essay 'El idioma analitico de John Wilkins'
(Borges 1960:134). In his turn, Borges writes of 'esas ambigtiedades, redundancias y deficiencias
... que el doctor Franz Kuhn atribuye a cierta enciclopedia china que se intitula Emporio celestial
de conocimientos benevolos'-but with no specific reference to Kuhn's works.]
3 On reading a draft of this review, J. D. McCawley suggested that utterances like orange be
seen as derived by deletion from the 'well-formed' sentences. T treats this view on p. 344.

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426 LANGUAGE, VOLUME 59, NUMBER 2 (1983)

totality for holistic unity. They are but fumbling efforts of one kind of consciousness to re-
constitute the sundered unity of another kind of consciousness.' (3)
In fact, some non-soteriological Indian thinking on language meshes remarkably with Derrida and
Wittgenstein. Derrida's invented 'differance' with an a, indicating that a linguistic sign both DEFERS
its signifi6 and DIFFERS FRON all other signs (1976:xliii), is itself based on Saussure's Cours
(1959:117-18), the passage ending: 'a segment of language can never in the final analysis be based
on anything except its non-coincidence with the rest'. But Dignaga (4th c. A.D.) claimed, in hi
apoha ('differentiation' or 'exclusion') theory of meaning, that 'the function of a word or name is
the exclusion or elimination of other possibilities' (Matilal 1971:40). Again, Wittgenstein's central
method in the Philosophical investigations (1958) has been called
'the method of distinction. Instead of looking for similarities by analysis he now concentrates
on uncovering DIFFERENCES by DISTINCTION. In fact he thought of using as a motto for the
Investigations a quotation from King Lear: 'I'll teach you differences."' (Fann 1971:51)
T has a fine account of problems surrounding concepts, based on Wittgenstein:
'Objectification is an infinite process, because each concept examined influences our under-
standing of every other concept, whether examined or not. It is as if turning our attention to
one concept causes all the others to draw toward it or define themselves relative to it.' (160)
Such matters are the focus of large chunks of the Investigations between ?134 and ?693 (cf. Finch
1977:256-7).
In relation to T's question ('How are concepts represented in the mind if not in language'?', 373),
Dignaga's theory of language again contains an apposite epigram: 'Speech is born out of conceptual
construction, and conceptual construction is born out of speech' (Matilal, 40). With general regard
to Wittgenstein, one might recall the remark that 'much of what the later Wittgenstein had to say
was anticipated about 1,800 years ago in India' (Gudmunsen 1977:113).
T's polydimensional account of meaning-as dealing with culture, hermeneutics, context, Hus-
serlian intentionality, and meaning schemata-is a major contribution. The last element is quite
original, but space allows just one tantalizing quotation:
'my intent is to demonstrate that most of what linguists call rules are in fact meaning schemata,
purely mechanical sequences of events which have neither purpose nor self-modification ...
The linguist's notion of grammar as a set of rules is already suspect then because his rules
are not really rules.' (113)

Pitched sensibly between an avant-garde intellectual level and the day-to-

day concerns of linguists, T's book links our discipline with intellectual de-
velopments of the late 20th century, some strangely anticipated in Asia. One
might recoil and say: 'THAT isn't linguistics!' However, Lichtenberg also re-
marked that, while the magnifying glass has been much used in science, few
scientists have used a 'minifying' glass to draw things together in perspective.
Tyler provides such a glass. He has drawn together more than any one linguist
might take an interest in, but to have done so is a service to all.
REFERENCES

BOLINGER, DWIGHT. 1965. The atomization of meaning. Lg. 41.555-73.

BORGES, JORGE LUIS. 1960. Otras inquisiciones. Buenos Aires: Emece. [Engl
Austin: University of Texas Press, 1964.]
DERRIDA, JACQUES. 1976. Of grammatology. Trans. by Gayatri Chakravo
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
FANN, K. T. 1971. Wittgenstein's conception of philosophy. Berkeley & Lo
University of California Press.
FINCH, HENRY LE ROY. 1977. Wittgenstein-the later philosophy: An exposition of the
Philosophical investigations. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press.

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 REVIEWS 427

FOUCAULT,
FOUCAULT, MICHEL.
MICHEL.1970.
1970.
The order
The order
of things:
of things:
An archaeology
An archaeology
of the human
of the
sciences.
human
London: Tavistock.
GUDMUNSEN, CHRIS. 1977. Wittgenstein and Buddhism. New York: Barnes & Nob
MATILAL, BIMAL K. 1971. Epistemology, logic, and grammar in Indian philosoph
analysis. The Hague: Mouton.
QUINE, WILLARD V. 0. 1979. A postscript on metaphor. On metaphor, ed. by She
Sacks, 159-60. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
SAMPSON, GEOFFREY. 1980. Making sense. Oxford: University Press.
SAUSSURE, FERDINAND DE. 1959. Course in general linguistics. Trans. by Wade Bas
New York: McGraw-Hill.
STEINER, GEORGE. 19-75. After Babel: Aspects of language and translation. Oxford
versity Press.
STERN, J. P. 1959. Lichtenberg: A doctrine of scattered occasions. Bloomington:
versity of Indiana Press.
WITTGENSTEIN, LUDWIG. 1958. Philosophical investigations. Trans. by G. E. M. A
scombe. 3rd ed. New York: Macmillan.

[Received 5 May 1982.]

Analyse psycholinguistique des erreurs faites lors de I'apprentissage d'une la

etrangere. By GHEORGHE DOCA. Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 198
Pp. vi, 250.
Reviewed by SUZETTE HADEN ELGIN, Ozark Center for Language Stud
This work has several aspects, each of substantial importance, and is unu
in that each is given the same full and meticulous treatment by the autho
presents a pedagogical experiment carried out within a specific theore
framework in psycholinguistics; a description of that framework, with e
term and concept given in rigorous detail; and a series of psycholingu
experiments carried out within the same theory and using the same circ
stances, but independent of the pedagogical experiment. It contains not o
element that can be criticized as sloppy research or writing; perhaps beca
of this otherwise flawless form, the incessant claims that the work of Doc
of his mentor, Tatiana Slama-Cazacu) is the first of its kind become extrem
irritating. He may be correct, but the net effect is tiresome.
The book begins with a good historical overview of linguistics as it has b
applied to foreign-language pedagogy. The claim that behaviorists always
on stimulus/response mechanisms, and the generativists on postulated in
mechanisms is somewhat excessive, but there is little else to fault here.
The historical section is followed by one on definition of terms, which D
takes very seriously. After stating that the object of study for linguistics is 'la
langue', that of psychology 'le langage', and that of sociolinguistics 'la parole',
he proposes that the object of study for psycholinguistics is distinct from these,
and defines it as

'the modifications which appear in individual linguistic systems and individual linguistic facts
as a result of the influence of psychological factors and of the context, the latter conceived
not just as linguistic context but also as situational, social, and historical context.' (19)

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