It is easy to deal with the situation “you misunderstood me” - thesis, antithesis, scuffle - and it's in the bag. It is harder to accept the position “you don’t understand me,” but a bottle of strong plus heart-to-heart talk will restore order here. The option “no one understands me” is already more serious, but for this, means have long been invented: the image of a cursed poet, ahead of his time a genius and green hair in protest.
Thinking has nothing to do with words, communication is extremely stressful for all parts of the brain, and attempts to create the perfect artificial language are doomed to fail.
There is no totally hopeless scenario, if you do not take into account one unpleasant fact - no one understands anyone in principle.
And the point is not in the difference of interests and not even in the fact that everyone considers each other to be idiots. The problems lie at a much deeper level - at the language level.
Problem 1. Language is a brain compromise
Over the past two centuries, language has more than once been declared identical to thinking. The most striking embodiment of this idea was the views of the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, who stated that objective information does not exist, but only linguistic practices (“the boundaries of my language mean the boundaries of my world”). Second in the top stands a broken hypothesis Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which exists in two versions - a "strong" and "weak." The first assumes that thinking and cognition are entirely conditioned by the categories of language. In the process of bloody scientific clashes, the "strong" option was discarded, since in the ultimate sense this would mean that an Englishman, a Russian and a Chinese could not communicate in principle.
The lighter version leans towards relativism - language is not limited to thinking, but leaves an imprint on it.
The philosopher, cognitive scientist and linguist Noam Chomsky was the first to talk about it back in the 50s, whose citation index still flickers somewhere between Freud and Plato.
Chomsky was interested in how a person is able to create an infinite number of new combinations using a limited number of words.
He came to the conclusion that in our heads there is a certain "first system" that allows us to do this, namely a universal mental grammar (later universality was reduced to only one ability - recursion). This idea is based on the ability of children to invent the grammatical features of the language spontaneously, without the participation of compassionate mothers and nasty aunts, furiously scratching the blackboard.
Recent research into the analysis of the actual use of language is blowing away the theory of mental grammar that has dominated linguistics for more than half a century. As well as one of its important offshoots: Pinker's very beautiful hypothesis that language is an instinct. But although grammar is not built into us from birth, we still have something. A whole complex of social and cognitive properties (categorization, reading communicative intention, the ability to draw analogies, etc.), which literally force us to instill in ourselves grammar and cram rules. All of these functions are inherited.
The presence of a single software that encourages us to learn a language is an impressive fact, worthy of the day of "Mental Grammar" at the Faculty of Philology. It makes our communication possible in principle. The catch is that in the process of recoding thinking to the level of language, the volume and completeness of what is being thought about is lost, since we can put into words only a part of our rich inner world. What is said by another person, we pass through our own filters - knowledge, emotions, experience and ideas about the environment. This also works in the opposite direction - pronouncing a ready-made phrase, we expect that the recipient will restore the part of the thought, eaten by the limitations of the language.
In addition, it is also difficult for us to communicate with each other physically. Language, as a higher function, does not have a clear localization in the brain, and during language processing we have to strain it entirely.
Moreover, not only the area of the cortex, but also its very depth - the cerebellum (as it turned out, an ardent enthusiast is involved not only in the processes of coordination, but also in the area of language, memory and emotions). When it comes to interpretation, the situation gets worse - it is extremely energy - consuming to "grope" into the meaning of what has been said to our cognitive system.
From all this, we can draw a simple conclusion: communicating with each other is rather dreary for us. And from here a completely natural question arises: if language serves to facilitate this process and, moreover, eats up energy, like a Chinese mining farm, then why not make it simple, accurate and logical?
Problem 2. Language is anarchy
No matter how firmly the association "the subject" Russian language "is a bunch of rules" is imprinted in our minds, globally the language has nothing to do with ideal stable laws. The path to this paradoxical truth went through numerous attempts to create a formal language that works according to such laws. By the way, here again Wittgenstein (early) is in the lead, to whom we will often refer. Not mentioning him when talking about linguistic problems is like ignoring the figure of ižek when talking about modern philosophy. It will be simply boring.
Early Wittgenstein's ideas culminated in a plan to create a formalistically polished language. His predecessors and teachers - early Leibniz, Russell, Frege and other martyrs of logic - had already tried to reduce language to a dry logical law, but Wittgenstein was the only one who went to the end.
He suggested to hell with removing synonymy, homonymy and statements with multiple meanings from the language. One statement = one logical atom.
So, in case of misunderstanding, it would be possible to lay out each statement by the bones, without getting confused in the process. Poets cry, writers howl, and Wittgenstein adds that mathematical logic should be used for analysis. Thus, from his point of view, it would be possible to get rid of the meaningless and pseudo-statements that flooded the language. Moreover, in such a system, an error in syntax would inevitably lead to an error at the semantics level.
According to the theory of logical atomism, reality consists of facts, and those, in turn, are composed of the objects themselves, their properties and relations between them. Everything is extremely clear: language is a projection of the world, and what is pronounced can be verified by the real "state of affairs". The theory would work great if we only used phrases like “two beers cost a hundred square meters”, but, unfortunately, people sometimes utter more complex constructions like “two beers cost a hundred square meters, the world is kind today”.
The early Wittgenstein, with his passionate desire for the perfect synchronization of the world and language, gave the following answer on this score: “What can be said at all must be said clearly; the same thing that is impossible to say should be kept silent."
The phrase became a historical meme, philosophical problems turned into consequences of language misuse, and the subtleties of use were simply bracketed. Later, having been ill with maximalism, Wittgenstein will nevertheless have mercy and stop suggesting everyone prefer silence when it comes to the unclear, and then completely smash his own formalist theory.
In parallel with the philosophical process of searching for a linguistic universe, there was another crusade - from the side of medicine, psychology and linguistics. At the end of the 19th century, French anthropologist-surgeon Paul Broca and German psychiatrist Karl Wernicke discovered specific parts of the brain responsible for the mechanics of speech. Subsequently, the following became clear.
People with problems in Broca's zone (provides motor skills, is associated with phonological and syntactic coding) can pronounce meaningful sentences without any grammatical connection. Those who do not have Wernicke's zone (responsible for reading the semantics), on the contrary, are virtuoso and according to the rules rant - but their statements are devoid of any meaning.
Linguistics picked up the baton and declared that, since this is the case, it means that the mechanisms of recognition and reproduction of different speech structures are partially independent. That is, syntax, semantics and phonetics exist almost separately from each other. This is also confirmed by modern neurolinguistics: our neural system perceives all levels of language in several isolated stages.
Until the early 1980s, it was believed that these levels, in particular syntax and semantics, interact quite simply, and both can be described as a formal system. If Chomsky reached only the grammatical level, then such researchers as Montague (the founder of formal linguistics) believed that "syntax is the algebra of forms, and semantics is the algebra of meanings." Accurate interpretation of phrases and sentences appeared to be a task from the category "like two fingers on the asphalt."
Ultimately, the abuse of logic led the relationship between a shaven tongue and a sweaty, stinking reality into that grim dead end, where straight lines become parallel and one with the other no longer coincides. Like Wittgenstein in his time, researchers stumbled over the same banal pebble - formal laws do not apply to natural languages.
The project of creating ideal languages reincarnated in writing artificial ones. It is thanks to him that we have Siri or Google Translate, which are often stupid due to the lack of flexibility in such languages.
Ordinary language remained outside the scope of dissection by logic (and structuralism) for one simple reason - it cannot be studied autonomously. Language is primarily a conversation. Moreover, it not only exists in a social form, but also develops with its help, which is clearly shown by one curious experiment. Fledgling freshmen, under the supervision of scientists, created copyright texts. Some - in the table, while others - in a blogging format with a response in the form of comments. As you might guess, it was the latter that began to use more sophisticated and original expressions.
As a living and constantly changing form, language has another important quality - it is not ideal a priori. Its three pillars are haphazard, indistinctness and subjectivity.
His favorite pastime is being contextual. And the sad thing (or not) is that we have all used and will use everyday language, not test-tube-grown Newspeak.
Thinking has nothing to do with words, communication is extremely stressful for all parts of the brain, and attempts to create the perfect artificial language are doomed to fail.
There is no totally hopeless scenario, if you do not take into account one unpleasant fact - no one understands anyone in principle.
And the point is not in the difference of interests and not even in the fact that everyone considers each other to be idiots. The problems lie at a much deeper level - at the language level.
Problem 1. Language is a brain compromise
Over the past two centuries, language has more than once been declared identical to thinking. The most striking embodiment of this idea was the views of the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, who stated that objective information does not exist, but only linguistic practices (“the boundaries of my language mean the boundaries of my world”). Second in the top stands a broken hypothesis Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which exists in two versions - a "strong" and "weak." The first assumes that thinking and cognition are entirely conditioned by the categories of language. In the process of bloody scientific clashes, the "strong" option was discarded, since in the ultimate sense this would mean that an Englishman, a Russian and a Chinese could not communicate in principle.
The lighter version leans towards relativism - language is not limited to thinking, but leaves an imprint on it.
Thinking itself, as much as we would like to attribute it to the inner voice, has nothing to do with words: modern cognitive science describes it as a pre-linguistic process.
In fact, we think in a graphic-symbolic quasi-language or, in the terminology of the Harvard cognitive psychologist Stephen Pinker, in "thought code". Multilevel constructions in Tesla's imagination, the discovery of the DNA helix through the appeared image and the words of Einstein that in the process of inventing the theory of relativity he saw himself flying astride a light beam - all this is in some way reliable. We think in "pure images" rather than words. But, since telepathy has not yet been invented, it still has to be expressed verbally. Our “linguistic” nature helps us in this.The philosopher, cognitive scientist and linguist Noam Chomsky was the first to talk about it back in the 50s, whose citation index still flickers somewhere between Freud and Plato.
Chomsky was interested in how a person is able to create an infinite number of new combinations using a limited number of words.
He came to the conclusion that in our heads there is a certain "first system" that allows us to do this, namely a universal mental grammar (later universality was reduced to only one ability - recursion). This idea is based on the ability of children to invent the grammatical features of the language spontaneously, without the participation of compassionate mothers and nasty aunts, furiously scratching the blackboard.
Recent research into the analysis of the actual use of language is blowing away the theory of mental grammar that has dominated linguistics for more than half a century. As well as one of its important offshoots: Pinker's very beautiful hypothesis that language is an instinct. But although grammar is not built into us from birth, we still have something. A whole complex of social and cognitive properties (categorization, reading communicative intention, the ability to draw analogies, etc.), which literally force us to instill in ourselves grammar and cram rules. All of these functions are inherited.
The presence of a single software that encourages us to learn a language is an impressive fact, worthy of the day of "Mental Grammar" at the Faculty of Philology. It makes our communication possible in principle. The catch is that in the process of recoding thinking to the level of language, the volume and completeness of what is being thought about is lost, since we can put into words only a part of our rich inner world. What is said by another person, we pass through our own filters - knowledge, emotions, experience and ideas about the environment. This also works in the opposite direction - pronouncing a ready-made phrase, we expect that the recipient will restore the part of the thought, eaten by the limitations of the language.
In addition, it is also difficult for us to communicate with each other physically. Language, as a higher function, does not have a clear localization in the brain, and during language processing we have to strain it entirely.
Moreover, not only the area of the cortex, but also its very depth - the cerebellum (as it turned out, an ardent enthusiast is involved not only in the processes of coordination, but also in the area of language, memory and emotions). When it comes to interpretation, the situation gets worse - it is extremely energy - consuming to "grope" into the meaning of what has been said to our cognitive system.
From all this, we can draw a simple conclusion: communicating with each other is rather dreary for us. And from here a completely natural question arises: if language serves to facilitate this process and, moreover, eats up energy, like a Chinese mining farm, then why not make it simple, accurate and logical?
Problem 2. Language is anarchy
No matter how firmly the association "the subject" Russian language "is a bunch of rules" is imprinted in our minds, globally the language has nothing to do with ideal stable laws. The path to this paradoxical truth went through numerous attempts to create a formal language that works according to such laws. By the way, here again Wittgenstein (early) is in the lead, to whom we will often refer. Not mentioning him when talking about linguistic problems is like ignoring the figure of ižek when talking about modern philosophy. It will be simply boring.
Early Wittgenstein's ideas culminated in a plan to create a formalistically polished language. His predecessors and teachers - early Leibniz, Russell, Frege and other martyrs of logic - had already tried to reduce language to a dry logical law, but Wittgenstein was the only one who went to the end.
He suggested to hell with removing synonymy, homonymy and statements with multiple meanings from the language. One statement = one logical atom.
So, in case of misunderstanding, it would be possible to lay out each statement by the bones, without getting confused in the process. Poets cry, writers howl, and Wittgenstein adds that mathematical logic should be used for analysis. Thus, from his point of view, it would be possible to get rid of the meaningless and pseudo-statements that flooded the language. Moreover, in such a system, an error in syntax would inevitably lead to an error at the semantics level.
According to the theory of logical atomism, reality consists of facts, and those, in turn, are composed of the objects themselves, their properties and relations between them. Everything is extremely clear: language is a projection of the world, and what is pronounced can be verified by the real "state of affairs". The theory would work great if we only used phrases like “two beers cost a hundred square meters”, but, unfortunately, people sometimes utter more complex constructions like “two beers cost a hundred square meters, the world is kind today”.
The early Wittgenstein, with his passionate desire for the perfect synchronization of the world and language, gave the following answer on this score: “What can be said at all must be said clearly; the same thing that is impossible to say should be kept silent."
The phrase became a historical meme, philosophical problems turned into consequences of language misuse, and the subtleties of use were simply bracketed. Later, having been ill with maximalism, Wittgenstein will nevertheless have mercy and stop suggesting everyone prefer silence when it comes to the unclear, and then completely smash his own formalist theory.
In parallel with the philosophical process of searching for a linguistic universe, there was another crusade - from the side of medicine, psychology and linguistics. At the end of the 19th century, French anthropologist-surgeon Paul Broca and German psychiatrist Karl Wernicke discovered specific parts of the brain responsible for the mechanics of speech. Subsequently, the following became clear.
People with problems in Broca's zone (provides motor skills, is associated with phonological and syntactic coding) can pronounce meaningful sentences without any grammatical connection. Those who do not have Wernicke's zone (responsible for reading the semantics), on the contrary, are virtuoso and according to the rules rant - but their statements are devoid of any meaning.
Linguistics picked up the baton and declared that, since this is the case, it means that the mechanisms of recognition and reproduction of different speech structures are partially independent. That is, syntax, semantics and phonetics exist almost separately from each other. This is also confirmed by modern neurolinguistics: our neural system perceives all levels of language in several isolated stages.
Until the early 1980s, it was believed that these levels, in particular syntax and semantics, interact quite simply, and both can be described as a formal system. If Chomsky reached only the grammatical level, then such researchers as Montague (the founder of formal linguistics) believed that "syntax is the algebra of forms, and semantics is the algebra of meanings." Accurate interpretation of phrases and sentences appeared to be a task from the category "like two fingers on the asphalt."
Ultimately, the abuse of logic led the relationship between a shaven tongue and a sweaty, stinking reality into that grim dead end, where straight lines become parallel and one with the other no longer coincides. Like Wittgenstein in his time, researchers stumbled over the same banal pebble - formal laws do not apply to natural languages.
The project of creating ideal languages reincarnated in writing artificial ones. It is thanks to him that we have Siri or Google Translate, which are often stupid due to the lack of flexibility in such languages.
Ordinary language remained outside the scope of dissection by logic (and structuralism) for one simple reason - it cannot be studied autonomously. Language is primarily a conversation. Moreover, it not only exists in a social form, but also develops with its help, which is clearly shown by one curious experiment. Fledgling freshmen, under the supervision of scientists, created copyright texts. Some - in the table, while others - in a blogging format with a response in the form of comments. As you might guess, it was the latter that began to use more sophisticated and original expressions.
As a living and constantly changing form, language has another important quality - it is not ideal a priori. Its three pillars are haphazard, indistinctness and subjectivity.
His favorite pastime is being contextual. And the sad thing (or not) is that we have all used and will use everyday language, not test-tube-grown Newspeak.
