Frances; For Harris the act of communication consists of an integrated action between communicators, at least two. The participants create a context and thus a sign and meaning. For instance, the teacher is at the front of the room. Johnny arrives late as usual. The teacher makes a grimace and simply points to the empty chair where she wants Johnny to sit. He complies. In a different situation, the teacher enters a room where her colleagues are standing. She grimaces and points to a chair. Her colleagues wonder what she "means" by this odd behavior. In the first instance the communication between the teacher and Johnny is successful and in the second case it's not even though the teacher's act was the same. It works with Johnny because he knows the macrosocial rule at hand (the teacher's gesture is a command) and he understands the circumstances (he is late and therefore expects the teacher's consternation -- the grimace -- and the silent command.) But among her peers, the teacher's communicative act fails because the macrosocial context is unclear and the circumstances don't fit her gesture. In written text the situation is far more complex but the same requirements of fitting language to the context created by the writer and the presumed context the writer creates for the reader (as in knowing the audience and addressing it appropriately) do apply. Again, nothing is prefixed. But since some contexts will be shared, usually local culture or larger, it's not difficult to create the right one and thus the right signs in specific instances.
I agree, again, that it's counter-intuitive for us to think of words not having pre-determined meanings that are passed from one person to another whenever they are used. Yet also it's very easy to recognize that the meanings of words depend very much on how they are used in each instance. It's far easier to prove the second sentence than the first. wc ----- Original Message ---- From: Frances Kelly <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Wed, March 30, 2011 9:34:02 PM Subject: RE: Signs of Signs of Signs: Terms Frances to William with thanks... You have brought up some good points for me to consider in my continued reading of integrationism. The idea of a "context" however is still a little vague for me. My early assumption was that the integrationist context was aimed at the users, and therefore occurred when the linguists actually engaged in the situation of communicating together with language signs. It may be in the alternative that the context for integrationism actually entails the locating and utilizing of the lingual signs themselves by the linguists, and is not applied wholly or mainly to only the linguists. Each context after all is held by integrationism to be unique and unlike any other, thereby denying any global similarity for contexts. It would seem to me that the internal context of the signs being related together would be less prone to becoming members of general classes than would be external locales. This idea of an onsite context may become clearer for me in due course. In regard to the construction of some agreed "meaning" for a language sign, it has not yet been revealed to me in the integrationist literature if this making of meaning entails using the usual linguistic and grammatic processes of denotation and connotation along with extension and intension, and also if some previous collateral experience and predetermined competence might be required of the linguists. This thorn may also become clearer in due course. On the matter of any sign having some free or fluid or flexible meaning, it is likely that a metaphoric change should occur at least about every three centuries or so. William wrote... For the integrationist a word does not have a pre-fixed meaning. The meaning is constructed in context. Thus a word is not a sign until it is used in a specific context. He offers three general categories of context: biomechanical (what is possible in human biological terms, what we are able to do with voice, gesture, etc.; macrosocial what is habituated language in a social context, small or large; and circumstantial, what is the case at a particular moment. I agree that it's very hard to follow some of his terms when by his own theory, they must remain slippery. We are all used to having anchor terms to tether our thoughts as we read difficult material. I think Harris is criticized for being vague at times, especially when his theory is put to the test beyond the safer waters of everyday communication. His blanket critique of non-integrationist language is "surrogational", meaning, I think, that it relies on a pseudo a-priori meaning, outside of any communicational context. Nevertheless, it's probably a mistake to read Harris from the position of "surrogational" linguistics. You can't really defeat his theory on the grounds that it doesn't employ and rest on the very logic and presumptions of the theories he's attacking. The only way to deal with him is to enter his thesis and try it out, and then look for internal flaws. The one crucial test of entry, for him, is to give up the notion that words have permanent, fixed meanings. The silent partner in his argument is old man Time. Since time never rests, change is the one constant albeit at differently perceived rates, and thus any meaning is forever slipping and morphing into another, even when they're "technical". Remember, Harris is the fellow who hates dictionaries! How can you expect him to accept anchor words and terms, even his own? Of course, that's what makes Harris' theory such a problem for linguists and scientists and humanists who insist on predetermined meanings and that's what makes Integrationist linguistics appealing to poets and other artists. Like pigs in the barnyard, artists wallow and roll in ambiguities, paradoxes, contradictions, and all manner of dialectical knots. Frances wrote... In the integrationist book by Harris on signs and language and communication there are several terms that seem to be used ambiguously. One group of related words in particular is not clear as to their meaning. They include the terms "exist" and "fact" and "object" and "real" and "token" and a few others. They are sometimes used as synonyms having the same definition, but are also often used to mean different things. The terms "type" and "truth" also pose some confusion in the book. My search for terminal clarity has taken to me other sources online, but with little success so far. This vagueness may be a deliberate attempt on the part of the integrationist framers to not be scientific or global, but this tack to make every user in each context a linguist may go to the failure of the thesis to be exact, and to thus not be useful in any serious research on signage and language. This tendency to be vague reminds me of the terms used loosely in the Morris book on signs and language and behavior, which vagueness has been justly criticized by experts in the field of sign study. In any event, my slow deep read continues to find correction for what it may be worth.
