Meaningful Enactment
Charles Taylor, The Language Animal: The Full Shape of the Human Linguistic Capacity
Harvard University Press, 368pp, £25.95, ISBN ISBN 9780674660205
reviewed by Gareth Carrol
In the preface to his book, Charles Taylor describes how he began writing The Language Animal in the late 1980s. His aim was to outline a new theory of the linguistic system, based not on traditional views of the descriptive power of language, but intended to show how language shapes every aspect of our lives and sense of self. Now, some 25 years later, he presents what is still only Part One of his opus. He explains that his intention was to support his theoretical account of the constitution of the language system with an analysis of post-Romantic poetics, and throughout this volume he indicates where he thinks such an analysis may lead. For now, though, he concentrates on the systematic development of his theory, presenting a detailed and thoughtful view of human communication and linguistic interaction.
It is clear from the start that Taylor comes from the position of a philosopher rather than a linguist, and as such he spends the opening chapter patiently laying out what he sees as the two major positions in modern linguistic philosophy: an ‘enframing' theory, where language is seen primarily as a tool for communication, independent of its context, and a constitutive theory, where language exists as a fundamental part of human experience. In this view language is embodied through its use, and meaning both emerges from and directly shapes the human experience.
Establishing the bases of these two approaches is essential since they form the bulk of the argument that Taylor presents throughout. He describes an enframing view as essentially that of classical epistemology, whereby words denote or unlock ideas. Language provides a way to categorise and organise our world in a way that is not possible using non-linguistic means. Such a theory is best captured in the work of the philosophers Hobbes, Locke and Condillac (hence Taylor’s ‘HLC’ designation for this approach). But this view reaches its limits when it sees the linguistic sign as arbitrary and disconnected from the thought that it represents. Taylor draws on the ‘HHH’ – the work of Hamann, Herder and Humboldt – to describe how a constitutive view quickly moves beyond these limitations, giving rise to a new kind of ‘reflective’ consciousness of how language shapes (or constitutes) our lives. Central to this is an inherent sensitivity to the issue of ‘intrinsic rightness’ – not just the knowledge that an arbitrary sign denotes a thing or concept, but an awareness of why this is so, and what aligns a given word with the characteristics of what it describes.
From this starting point Taylor develops his argument for a ‘constitutive’ view further. He talks of the ‘holism’ of language: human beings do not exist in isolation, but live in a larger and ever-changing social context. So language exists as a system, within which we are restricted by the limits of what we can say, but are simultaneously able to evolve using language as the basis for reflection, for learning, and for self-transformation. This is the heart of Taylor’s constitutive view of language: meaning does not exist independently of the social and interpersonal context in which it is used. An example that recurs often throughout the book serves to demonstrate the creative dimension of this. Taylor describes the case of the leather-jacketed biker, swaggering with ‘an exaggeratedly leisurely pace,’ whose elaborate body language is clearly understood as ‘saying something.’ It reflects a way of interacting with the world, imperfectly captured in the linguistic designation of him as ‘macho,’ hence a constitutive view of language, in its broadest sense, concerns everything that this person’s manner and behaviour ‘says’ about him and his way of life. The term ‘macho’ unlocks the domain that it encodes, not simply referring to a thing, quality, action or emotion, but mapping an entire network of meaning that is understood only within the context in which it is used.
Taylor concludes his opening chapter with a further subdivision of his constitutive view, seeing language both as accessive – a way of ‘regestalting’ the world using new experiences to beget new ways of describing things – and ‘existential’ – as language offers a way of describing and characterising new behaviours, new social relations and new frontiers of human possibility (as with the example of ‘macho’ behaviour). In the next chapter he proceeds to discuss the question of how language develops, drawing on the work of linguists and developmental psychologists such as Tomasello, Vygotsky and Bakhtin to show that linguistic interaction is necessarily a social behaviour, and that development is as much about realising that there is not one ‘right way’ to describe the world as it is a reflection of how the sense of self emerges. He then returns to the question of ‘encoding,’ and continues to demonstrate that an enframing view is insufficient in failing to acknowledge that language has many more functions and potentials than mere description, and that these functions cannot easily be separated from one another.
In the next section of the book, Taylor outlines how the HLC view broadly aligns with the dominant 20th century linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure, where ‘signifier’ and ‘signified’ are connected in an arbitrary and unmotivated way. Much of this approach has been carried into modern philosophy, Taylor claims, but an important part of what he calls ‘post-Fregean’ thought is to acknowledge the various nuances of sense, reference and connotation that call into question the strictly arbitrary nature of language. We move, in Chapter 5, to the ‘figuring dimension,’ where Taylor discusses the importance of processes such as metaphor and metonymy in his constitutive view. Metaphor provides a highly productive route to the formation of new words and new ways of creating meaning, and the discussion of some well-established metaphorical schemata (for example, the ‘love is a journey’ metaphor examined at length in the work of George Lakoff) provides a clear foundation for this topic.
Taylor then explores the notion of ‘constitution’ in more detail. He describes linguistic constitution as the process of articulation, in the sense of rendering meaning into an utterance. Again, we are reminded that language cannot be conceived in purely descriptive or transactional terms, and linguistic innovation takes us quickly beyond the boundaries of the enframing view. The use of language to designate an independent object in the world is unproblematic enough, but as Taylor states, ‘to grasp a new meaning is to discover a new way of feeling, or experiencing the world.’ Taylor then expands this idea to the level of discourse, or the way in which language is used to express communicative and performative function, and to build and maintain relationships. This section is neatly summarised with ‘one of the main messages of this book’: that understanding language necessarily ‘involves seeing it in the context of meaningful enactment.’
A section entitled Further Applications presents a brief discussion of some ideas that are presumably to be explored in more detail in Volume 2. Taylor examines the use of narrative, and demonstrates that to tell a story is also to present the background against which that story should be evaluated and understood. In this way narrative is a tool for ‘making sense of our lives’ and, perhaps rather more nihilistically, is a way to ‘find or devise ways of living bearably in time.’ Chapter nine addresses well-trodden territory in discussing the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis – the relativistic view that language shapes the way we are able to think. Taylor argues that the user of a language – any language – is more than simply one well-versed in the modes of communication, but as much one who understands (at least to some degree) the social, cultural and societal uses of that language. As Taylor concludes, once language is seen in the constitutive model that he has presented, linguistic relativity takes on an entirely different role: language does not constrain thought, but necessarily reflects the social meaning that is essential to human interaction.
The book’s closing chapter provides an effective and satisfying conclusion, reviewing what has been explored and posing thought-provoking questions of both a linguistic and non-linguistic nature. Taylor finishes by reiterating his intention to publish the companion to this volume: a treatise on the poetics of the post-Romantics from which he took his inspiration. Both studies, he suggests, take the HHH approach as a starting point, and between them will present the two sides of the same outlook on the nature of human communication through linguistic interaction.
The depth of this work is clear to see, and it reflects the fruits of several decades of thought and development. Taylor’s style is always clear, and his argument well-reasoned, but the solidity and detail of the theories he draws on mean the result is far from an easy read. This is in no way popular linguistics, but rather a treatise on the philosophy of language with no punches pulled, and as such requires commitment and concentration. The reward is a far-reaching theory of language as a social, emotional and developmental system, rather than as a mere tool in any mechanistic or transactional sense. Linguists (depending on their persuasion) may clamour for more empirical support, but then perhaps this is to come in the companion volume.
It is clear from the start that Taylor comes from the position of a philosopher rather than a linguist, and as such he spends the opening chapter patiently laying out what he sees as the two major positions in modern linguistic philosophy: an ‘enframing' theory, where language is seen primarily as a tool for communication, independent of its context, and a constitutive theory, where language exists as a fundamental part of human experience. In this view language is embodied through its use, and meaning both emerges from and directly shapes the human experience.
Establishing the bases of these two approaches is essential since they form the bulk of the argument that Taylor presents throughout. He describes an enframing view as essentially that of classical epistemology, whereby words denote or unlock ideas. Language provides a way to categorise and organise our world in a way that is not possible using non-linguistic means. Such a theory is best captured in the work of the philosophers Hobbes, Locke and Condillac (hence Taylor’s ‘HLC’ designation for this approach). But this view reaches its limits when it sees the linguistic sign as arbitrary and disconnected from the thought that it represents. Taylor draws on the ‘HHH’ – the work of Hamann, Herder and Humboldt – to describe how a constitutive view quickly moves beyond these limitations, giving rise to a new kind of ‘reflective’ consciousness of how language shapes (or constitutes) our lives. Central to this is an inherent sensitivity to the issue of ‘intrinsic rightness’ – not just the knowledge that an arbitrary sign denotes a thing or concept, but an awareness of why this is so, and what aligns a given word with the characteristics of what it describes.
From this starting point Taylor develops his argument for a ‘constitutive’ view further. He talks of the ‘holism’ of language: human beings do not exist in isolation, but live in a larger and ever-changing social context. So language exists as a system, within which we are restricted by the limits of what we can say, but are simultaneously able to evolve using language as the basis for reflection, for learning, and for self-transformation. This is the heart of Taylor’s constitutive view of language: meaning does not exist independently of the social and interpersonal context in which it is used. An example that recurs often throughout the book serves to demonstrate the creative dimension of this. Taylor describes the case of the leather-jacketed biker, swaggering with ‘an exaggeratedly leisurely pace,’ whose elaborate body language is clearly understood as ‘saying something.’ It reflects a way of interacting with the world, imperfectly captured in the linguistic designation of him as ‘macho,’ hence a constitutive view of language, in its broadest sense, concerns everything that this person’s manner and behaviour ‘says’ about him and his way of life. The term ‘macho’ unlocks the domain that it encodes, not simply referring to a thing, quality, action or emotion, but mapping an entire network of meaning that is understood only within the context in which it is used.
Taylor concludes his opening chapter with a further subdivision of his constitutive view, seeing language both as accessive – a way of ‘regestalting’ the world using new experiences to beget new ways of describing things – and ‘existential’ – as language offers a way of describing and characterising new behaviours, new social relations and new frontiers of human possibility (as with the example of ‘macho’ behaviour). In the next chapter he proceeds to discuss the question of how language develops, drawing on the work of linguists and developmental psychologists such as Tomasello, Vygotsky and Bakhtin to show that linguistic interaction is necessarily a social behaviour, and that development is as much about realising that there is not one ‘right way’ to describe the world as it is a reflection of how the sense of self emerges. He then returns to the question of ‘encoding,’ and continues to demonstrate that an enframing view is insufficient in failing to acknowledge that language has many more functions and potentials than mere description, and that these functions cannot easily be separated from one another.
In the next section of the book, Taylor outlines how the HLC view broadly aligns with the dominant 20th century linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure, where ‘signifier’ and ‘signified’ are connected in an arbitrary and unmotivated way. Much of this approach has been carried into modern philosophy, Taylor claims, but an important part of what he calls ‘post-Fregean’ thought is to acknowledge the various nuances of sense, reference and connotation that call into question the strictly arbitrary nature of language. We move, in Chapter 5, to the ‘figuring dimension,’ where Taylor discusses the importance of processes such as metaphor and metonymy in his constitutive view. Metaphor provides a highly productive route to the formation of new words and new ways of creating meaning, and the discussion of some well-established metaphorical schemata (for example, the ‘love is a journey’ metaphor examined at length in the work of George Lakoff) provides a clear foundation for this topic.
Taylor then explores the notion of ‘constitution’ in more detail. He describes linguistic constitution as the process of articulation, in the sense of rendering meaning into an utterance. Again, we are reminded that language cannot be conceived in purely descriptive or transactional terms, and linguistic innovation takes us quickly beyond the boundaries of the enframing view. The use of language to designate an independent object in the world is unproblematic enough, but as Taylor states, ‘to grasp a new meaning is to discover a new way of feeling, or experiencing the world.’ Taylor then expands this idea to the level of discourse, or the way in which language is used to express communicative and performative function, and to build and maintain relationships. This section is neatly summarised with ‘one of the main messages of this book’: that understanding language necessarily ‘involves seeing it in the context of meaningful enactment.’
A section entitled Further Applications presents a brief discussion of some ideas that are presumably to be explored in more detail in Volume 2. Taylor examines the use of narrative, and demonstrates that to tell a story is also to present the background against which that story should be evaluated and understood. In this way narrative is a tool for ‘making sense of our lives’ and, perhaps rather more nihilistically, is a way to ‘find or devise ways of living bearably in time.’ Chapter nine addresses well-trodden territory in discussing the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis – the relativistic view that language shapes the way we are able to think. Taylor argues that the user of a language – any language – is more than simply one well-versed in the modes of communication, but as much one who understands (at least to some degree) the social, cultural and societal uses of that language. As Taylor concludes, once language is seen in the constitutive model that he has presented, linguistic relativity takes on an entirely different role: language does not constrain thought, but necessarily reflects the social meaning that is essential to human interaction.
The book’s closing chapter provides an effective and satisfying conclusion, reviewing what has been explored and posing thought-provoking questions of both a linguistic and non-linguistic nature. Taylor finishes by reiterating his intention to publish the companion to this volume: a treatise on the poetics of the post-Romantics from which he took his inspiration. Both studies, he suggests, take the HHH approach as a starting point, and between them will present the two sides of the same outlook on the nature of human communication through linguistic interaction.
The depth of this work is clear to see, and it reflects the fruits of several decades of thought and development. Taylor’s style is always clear, and his argument well-reasoned, but the solidity and detail of the theories he draws on mean the result is far from an easy read. This is in no way popular linguistics, but rather a treatise on the philosophy of language with no punches pulled, and as such requires commitment and concentration. The reward is a far-reaching theory of language as a social, emotional and developmental system, rather than as a mere tool in any mechanistic or transactional sense. Linguists (depending on their persuasion) may clamour for more empirical support, but then perhaps this is to come in the companion volume.