Dear Peirce-Listers,
I'm posting below some material from the second edition (currently in progress)
of my book The Speaking Self: Language
Lore and English Usage in case anybody is interested in a conception of
language structure that repudiates the Chomskyan model and asserts one that is
strictly anchored to Peircean pragmaticism (prominently including his
semeiotic).This material is also part of my paper "Paradox: Theme and
Semiotic Variations," which recently appeared in Semiotics 2014: The Semiotics of Paradox, ed. J. Pelkey et al., 1-28. (SSA Yearbook,
2. Ottawa: Legas, 2015). I'll be
glad to send you a PDF of the latter upon request.
Michael
P. S. Many years ago, in a publication I can't now remember, Chomsky
stated, when asked who his favorite philosopher was, that it was Peirce. In my opinion, whatever reading of Peirce's rationalism there is that can be attributed to
Chomsky, none of it that can be called accurate is compatible with generative
grammar.
5.29 Semeiotic Neostructuralism and Language
GLOSSARY
cortex, n.: outer layer of neural tissue in humans and other mammals
postbiotic, adj.: pertaining to the period following the appearance of life
pragmaticism, n.: the pragmatic philosophy of C. S. Peirce
semeiotic, adj. < semeiosis, n.: the process whereby something functions as a sign
teleology, n.: a metaphysical doctrine explaining phenomena and events by final causes
Readers of this book who have an interest in the conceptual underpinnings of its vignettes may benefit from being reminded of some of the main points in which the doctrine christened “semeiotic neostructuralism” (in the spirit of C. S. Peirce’s pragmaticism) by the author differs fundamentally from the dominant paradigm of contemporary linguistics, which is nominally identified with Chomsky and his followers––regardless, nota bene, whether these latter-day practitioners have renamed their particular enterprise (e. g., “Optimality Theory” or “Cognitive Linguistics;” ALL linguistics is necessarily ‘cognitive’, hence CL is a pleonasm) so as to differentiate it from what was originally called “tranformational” or “generative” grammar.
Chomsky has a rather mechanistic/mechanicalist view of language, for all that he understands that the freedom to compose sentences that are original, unpredictable, and yet intelligible is different from the unoriginal, predictable products of strictly mechanical action. His view is mechanistic nonetheless because he simply posits underlying structures by which sentences are to be generated. Possibly in a wider perspective, Chomsky is no more reductively mechanistic than a semeiotic neostructuralist, in a wider perspective, is a phenomenalist. For he no doubt admits (or would admit) that the linguistic universals in our brains are not just there, period, but evolved, with the brain’s evolution, as chance variants that were ‘selected’ by the principle of reproductive success. Similarly, the intentions or needs or felt urgencies to speak or to achieve certain outcomes might explain––but only in a context wider than Chomskyan linguistics––why language’s generative mechanisms are used in this way rather than in that.
But if we focus simply on the linguist’s study, as diversely conceived by Chomsky and the semeiotic neostructuralist, then there is this difference: for the one, the teleology of language is excluded from linguistic explanation, while for the other it is the very stuff of explanation. For the one, linguistic phenomena conform to a describable structure of highly abstract laws, while for the other linguistic phenomena exhibit an intelligible if less abstract, more complicated structure. For the one, the system is a given, and any changes in it are accidental, while for the other development is essential to language––development is more the reality than is any one system of rules––and that development is also intelligible and not merely given.
That is the conflict. The reason the semeiotic neostructuralist approach is, if it is successful, superior is that it can be used to explain the very evolution of the brain-mechanism or linguistic capacities and universals that Chomsky can at best describe. That is, given creatures somewhat sociable, exchanging signs as their way of life, then the survival value of their communicating more elaborate and precise diagrams would explain the retention of those fortuitous variations, say, in brain structure that promote exactly such powers of expressible diagrammatization. That is, the principle of this evolution will be itself linguistic, and continuous with the principles of postbiotic, strictly linguistic evolution.
The thought here is not unlike that which refuses to postulate linguistic intentions separate from the capacity to exercise those intentions. Just as there could be no desire to speak without an ability to speak, so also there could be no evolution of linguistic capacities––even, or especially, at the physiological level––except among those who, already speaking to one another, will more likely survive as a species if they speak more effectively. Thus, instead of a neurophysiological explanation of language, we have a linguistic explanation of the higher cortex––and probably not just the speech centers either, since so many of our capacities for sensation and action would be bootless without our capacities for speech.
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