Varenne: Communication and Culture -- VII

This is the seventh in a series of notes to fifteen lectures for my class Communication and Culture.

Required Reading:

Jakobson, Roman " Concluding statement: Linguistics and poetics." in Style in language. Edited by T. Sebeok, 350-377. New York: Wiley.
Duranti, Alessandro Linguistic Anthropology. New York: Cambridge University Press. 1997. (Chapter 7)

Transition notes

more on thearbitrariness of the sign and the enforced thingness of semiotic systems embodied in everyday practices

Saussure, like Jacobson and Hymes, was talking about language in general, not particularly about A language, thereby continuing our comments about the distinction to be made between the cultural process (Culture) and cultureS in the plural. Saussure however, by emphasizing what he calls the "synchronic law" points at how talking about A language or A culture might be possible: above all by emphasizing form rather than content, the social (interactional) rather than the personal (socialized).

While these matters are still hotly debated theoretically, and while the recent developments of interest in the political aspects of culture, through their focus on "hegemony" are bringing back some of the concerns with A (dominant) culture versus a multiplicity of (dominated) and yet single-through-their-difference cultures, it is important to distinguish between the systematizing processes described by Saussure (p.73) and "hegemony."

When Saussure emphasized the social reality of language as a synchronic structure (related to a gestalt), he too approached the issue from the point of view of the speaker (learner) confronted with something, the pattern, that he does not control even though he experiences it, perceives it, uses it, and, possibly, makes poetry out of it, deconstructs it, etc.. Saussure by emphasizing the social and contractual aspects of all communication systems also emphasized their "arbitrariness," that is the fact that they are joint constructions. Communication does not arise out of the nature of humanity, narrowly defined, but rather out of its "culture" (which is of course an aspect of its nature, broadly defined). Saussure, however, could not quite account for this construction of syntagmatic gestals (i.e. gestalts that require complex sequences of movements over time to reveal themselves (e.g. the telling of a joke--see below).

It is a fair criticism of Saussure to say that he had nothing to say about the actual production of sentences. While Saussure is most powerful in his insistence on the social source of language, his analysis of meaning considers only decoding, e.g. reading or over- hearing.
To this extent he makes it appear that language processing is a psychological (cognitive) process.

returning to issues of ongoing language use--that is "parole" and given all we said about language/culture regarding
1. from the Saussurian perspective:
  1. meaning
  2. arbitrariness
  3. systematicity
  4. "double articulation" (making meaning out of "meaningless" items)
2. and given that language, broadly framed, is the fundamental condition of human togetherness (what makes it possible as well as constrain it.)
3. then what happens when people start talking with each other?
  1. that is, what is it that they can do (on the basis of what we see them doing)?
  2. and what is it that we can use to "explain&equot; it?
4. two traditions
  1. late Jakobson and poetry
  2. Hymes, the ethnography of speaking, sociolinguistics, and a new modeling of arbitrary constraints
from constraints to possibilities and back to constraints (and further possibilities)
1. In our discussions of patterning in culture and communication, we have mostly emphasized so far the constraining power of man-made facts on individuals as actors. The importance of the paper by Jakobson is in its emphasis on potentialities, that is on the ways structures allow for change through poesis (play and manipulation for pleasure (and profit?)).
2. The authors discussed by Duranti, particularly Hymes, represent a new generation of anthropological (socio-) linguists who resisted what appeared the pure formalism (and introspection) of the dominant linguistic traditions that evolved from Saussure (and other linguists). They reclaimed the observation of everyday practice, and of the whole of linguistic (communicational) processes as that which theory had to address.
on poetry
1. Jakobson and the development of linguistics out of grammar and semantics into matters traditionally the field of anthropologists and others.
  1. From Saussurian linguistics to a specific interest in language as used in society:
    1. deixis (how language marks the point of view of the speaker)
    2. poetics
  2. the model of communication as a way of ordering the many possibilities now opened for investigation.
    1. Factors: what in involved (notice the absence of the "third")
    2. Functions: what is/can be/must be done
    3. implications:
      1. a human message always does more than transmit a bit of referential information.
      2. It always give more information (by marking who is speaking, who is being addressed, etc.),
        
        for example: modes of addressing e-mail messages
  3. eventually, Jakobson is most concerned about the poetic function that is about the relationship between the mechanisms of language (phonetic, semantic, grammar) and what poets do with it to make it do more
    1. and allows for an element of
      1. mystery or play (the poetic function) as well as an element of
      2. self-consciousness of itself as a language (the metalingual function) "I like Ike"
        "Something there is that doesn't love a wall" (Frost)
    2. this could be related to what we discussed earlier as "double articulation."
    3. the central place to be of symbols and metaphor in human communication. Note that "reference" is a function rather than a factor. It is something that is achieved and thus comes second.
    4. the beginning of the movement towards what became central to Bakhtin and now the people in "popular culture" studies.
    5. BUT not to forget the materiality of language and the importance of "contact" (medium): deaf, blind, written, computer, etc. The messages means nothing by itself if it is does not build upon the medium of contact.
  4. for example: 'LOL'
the constraints on speaking
1. Hymes and sociolinguistics
  1. The radical expansion of our understanding of the ways in which society
    1. expresses itself (--> determinism?)
    2. is constructed (language as action)in the very act of speaking. Thus issues of:
      1. power
      2. gender
      3. group identity (ethnic, religious, sexual orientation, etc.)
  2. S.P.E.A.K.I.N.G. as a major expansion of Jakobson's model of communication. Less systematic but more descriptive; somewhat miscellaneous in its ordering of the functions, but essential.
  3. The need for ethnography of speaking that is the deliberate and carfual examination of the actual situation of speaking as it can be observed from a distance.
    1. This is more than a discussion of "context"
    2. it is a call for exact descriptions of what is involved
      1. in the co-occurring speech and other inscriptions (place, time, etc.)
      2. in the feature that is being used to mark/construct the context
2. by implication, and several criticisms of Saussure notwithstanding, a further expansion of the concern with the systematicity (coherence, patterning) of each of the packages of features being discussed:
  1. all ways of speaking are langue (even though they must be discovered and analyzed by paying close attention to parole).

Some questions (in the context of this course)
Relate Jakobson's discussion of poetics to Fiske's discussion of the "producerly" text (pay attention to the examples they use). Summarize the different ways of understanding the "social" in Saussure vs. the sociolinguists. What are the key concepts that make of language a useful institutional analogy for culture?