Table Of Content

Speaking and Language: Defence of Poetry Paul Goodman “In this book,” says Paul Goodman, “I try to de¬ scribe how people actually speak and the language that is actually spoken. I find that I am steering a middle course between the dogmatic phenom- enologists on the one hand and the dogmatic lin¬ guists and scientists of Communications on the other. This gives me the genuine pleasure of being able to affirm platitudes that all the others are denying.” In fact, by sticking to the big issues and insisting on what is prima facie, Goodman presents the whole subject of modern linguistics in a new light. Those who know Goodman’s other books, Growing Up Absurd, Compulsory Mis-Education, People or Personnel, will recognize his method: bringing together what everybody knows, and isn’t saying—and it is a new thing. He shows that for fifty years the scientific lin¬ guists have been vastly overestimating the code as a “means of communication.” Good actual lan¬ guage, either colloquial speech or literature, is a tension between the code and what needs to be said. It is also a tension between the expressivity of the speaker and the comprehension of the hearer. Thus language is not a means of communication between speaker and hearer, it is their communica¬ tion. The book draws heavily on Goodman’s many years as a psychotherapist, distinguishing examples of vital speech and neurotic speech, and developing Kurt Goldstein’s theory of aphasia. (The constant code of the linguists and the cultural anthropol¬ ogists turns out to be, usually, a neurotic symp- (continued, on back flap) BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2017 with funding from Kahle/Austin Foundation https://archive.org/details/speakinglanguageOOgood Other books by Paul Goodman Homespun of Oatmeal Gray Hawkweed: Poems Five Years: Thoughts During a Useless Time Three Plays: The Young Disciple, Faustina, Jonah Making Do The Lordly Hudson and Other Poems Our Visit to Niagara The Empire City The Break-Lip of Our Camp Parents’ Day Stop-light and Other Noli Plays The Facts of Life Adam and His Works New Reformation: Notes of a Neolithic Conservative Like a Conquered Province: The Moral Ambiguity of America People or Personnel: Decentralizing and the Mixed System Compulsory Mis-education The Society I Live in Is Aline The Community of Scholars Utopian Essays and Practical Proposals Growing Up Absurd Drawing the Line Communitas (with Percival Goodman) Gestalt Therapy (with F. S. Peris and Ralph Hefjerline) Art and Social Nature Kafka’s Prayer The Structure of Literature Speaking and Language: DEFENCE OF POETRY