Signs, Meaning and Experience: Integrational Approaches to Linguistics and Semiotics

154 Pages·1.011 MB·English

by  Pablé Adrian, Hutton Christopher.

Semiotics, Communication and Cognition
Edited by
Paul Cobley and Kalevi Kull

Volume 15
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ISBN 978-1-5015-1069-4
e-ISBN (EPUB) 9781501502316
e-ISBN (PDF) 978-1-5015-0228-6
e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-1-5015-0231-6
ISSN 1867-0873

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress.

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed
bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.

© 2015 Walter de Gruyter Inc., Boston/Berlin

www.degruyter.com

Epub-production: Jouve, www.jouve.com
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This book is dedicated to the memory of Roy Harris (1931–2015)
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We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding, The Four Quartets

O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?

William Butler Yeats, Among School Children

Anyhow, it is all nonsense. I mean, the notion that language is made of words is all nonsense—and
when I said that gestures could not be translated into “mere words”, I was talking nonsense,
because there is no such thing as “mere words”. And all the syntax and grammar and all that stuff
is nonsense. It’s all based on the idea that “mere” words exist—and there are none.

Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind
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Inhaltsverzeichnis
Semiotics, Communication and Cognition
Titel
Impressum
Widmung
Preface
1. Theoretical Foundations
Intellectual background: integrationism, linguistics and semiotics
The metalanguage of linguistics and expertise
‘Integration’
Parameters and principles
‘First-order’ and ‘second-order’
Surrogationalism
The language myth
Segregationalism and structuralism
The semiotics of writing
Is there such a thing as ‘data’?
The status of the anecdote
Aims of integrationism
Integrationism beyond language
Integrationism: a summary
2. Topics and Issues
2.1 Language and expertise
Case studies
On ‘folk’ and ‘scientific’ linguistic beliefs (Harris 1990a: 462 – 3)
Lay and professional metalinguistic knowledge (H. Davis 1997, 2001)
Questions for reflection
2.2 What ‘a language’ is (not)
Case studies
Language games (Tao & Tam 2010)
The ‘foul language fiasco’ (Cheung 2010)
Questions for reflection
2.3 A new epistemology
Case studies
Dialect perception (Harris 1990b)
Autism and ‘linguistic’ knowledge (Harris 2009b: 13 – 16, Bisgaard Nielsen 2011)
Questions for reflection
2.4 The myth of names
Case Studies
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The castles of Bellinzona (Pablé 2009; 2010; 2012a)
Names in intercultural communication (Hoyois 2010)
Questions for reflection
2.5 Responsibility and the sign-maker
Case studies
The truth about truth-conditional semantics (Harris 1987a: 156 – 61)
Language, responsibility, and online forums (Wong 2010)
Questions for reflection
2.6 Integrating reality
Case studies
The subjectivity of the ‘real’ (Pablé 2011a; 2013b)
The Great Wall of China (Zhou 2010)
Questions for reflection
2.7 Cognitive mythology
Case studies
‘Logical thinking’ (Harris 2009e: 37 – 42, Zhang 2013)
Autoglottic space (Harris 1989b: 99 – 106)
Questions for reflection
2.8 Signs, communication and integration
Case studies
Integrating language and practical action (Jones 2011)
The railroad sign code and (un)successful integration (Bade 2011)
Questions for reflection
2.9 The ‘language gap’
Case studies
Monkeys and communication (Harris 1984)
The origin of language (T. Taylor 1997a)
Questions for reflection
2.10 Language and freedom (of speech)
Case studies
Freedom of expression and trademark law (Hutton 2009)
Language and liberty (Harris 1990c: 157–159)
Questions for reflection
3. Discussion Materials
Research questions & methodology
The origin of language
Alternative frameworks
Saussure: code and communication
4. Conclusion
Further Readings
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References
Index
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Preface
This book is designed to serve as an academic introduction to integrationism and integrational
linguistics and to the wider domain of semiotic inquiry into which it falls. It explores debates,
difficulties and controversies that are of relevance to a wide range of fields and disciplines. The
book originated in an undergraduate course, Signs, Language and Communication, co-taught by
the authors in the School of English at the University of Hong Kong. The course was first taught in
2010 (and consecutively in 2012 and 2013), and ideas and materials from student projects, as well
as postgraduate dissertations, have been included. Originally conceived as a companion volume to
Roy Harris’ Introduction to Integrational Linguistics (1998), the book as written is a stand-alone,
analytic survey of integrationism and an exploration of its relation to linguistic theory and
semiotics.
The book is divided into three main sections: (1) Theoretical Foundations; (2) Topics and Issues;
(3) Discussion Materials. These are followed by a list of references. The Theoretical Foundations
section offers a summary of the basic intellectual position taken by integrationism. It uses two
contrastive reference points, namely mainstream linguistic theory and the discipline of semiotics.
The focus in explicating integrationism is primarily on the founder of integrational linguistics, Roy
Harris, not least because of the vigour and clarity with which he has laid out his intellectual
position. However the text includes materials and ideas from his students, collaborators or others
engaged with integrationism. This work does not pretend to offer a full account of Harris’ own
intellectual journey (which includes significant works on topics such as art, writing, history), nor of
the writings of integrationists, who have followed a diverse set of trajectories.
The body of the book, Topics and Issues, consists of a set of short sections organized by subject
area. They are relatively self-contained, and might be read selectively or in a different order. Each
section includes a Case Studies and Questions for Reflection sub-section. The topics discussed are
classics in Harrisian writing; at the same time, many of the issues raised here have been taken up
more recently in the sociolinguistic literature, where the code-based notion of ‘a language’ has been
criticized as inadequate (e. g. identity studies, polylanguaging, global Englishes), as well as in
certain branches of semiotics (e. g. the distributed view of cognition). Non-integrationists who find
themselves in agreement with a Harrisian critique of the orthodoxy, albeit only superficially, will
find this section helpful in positioning integrationism vis-à-vis their own unorthodox stance. The
third section, Discussion Materials, contains material for further study, in particular some longer
quotations for analysis, an analysis of interpretative issues arising from the ‘speech circuit’ section
of Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics, as well as further questions for general discussion. In
addition to full details for references included in the text, a brief guide is given to collections and
other sources of integrational writings.
The structure and organization of the book has been the subject of extended discussion between
the authors and between the authors and the series editors. Responses to earlier drafts of the work
were sharply divided, with some readers preferring the Theoretical Foundations section as a stand-
alone statement of integrational views, while others found the sections with case studies more
illuminating. Our aim in structuring the book in this way has been to allow as many voices as
possible to be heard, and we have used an open-ended question format in conjunction with
extensive direct quotation and dialogues, so that the text might serve in part as a sourcebook for a
reading group or for the classroom context. We also feel that the structure reflects the way people
often read longer texts today: they do not consistently start at the beginning of a text and work
their way through to the end. There is no ideal structure for a work such as this, as the authors have
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