Part I -- Chapter Two Language and the Objectification of Experience
Our evolving 'theory of natural discourse' had some explanatory utility, it appears, at the level of individual impairment of function. The brain-damaged patients, whom Professor Damasio treated and whose histories he reviews in his book Descartes' Error (1994), suffered effects of two kinds: the production and display of feeling was destroyed while, at the same time, the recognition and processing of feeling in others was blocked.(1) We have interpreted this social-neurological trauma as a massive disabling of the discursive function. The social boundaries of the individual were abnormally retracted, his and her capacity obstructed for empathetic 'interaction' with the 'other'. For these individuals the world was exclusively constituted. It presented itself as an 'objective entity'. |
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Twin Pillars...
But the clinical reality which Damasio describes is merely the microcosm of a much larger
pathology. It should be hardly necessary to state that 'objectivity' is the lens our industrial
society employs to view the world. So exclusive is this perspective that it pushes other
approaches to reality off the table. The 'objective construction' is, it seems, the only
understanding Western Culture aspires to (and allows).
Although the issue is most complex -- offered here is the briefest outline -- the view which
begins to emerge is that language, the English language in particular, may be a significant latter-day contributor to the shaping and propagation of this one-sided cultural disposition. Despite its
late appearance, the English language has played an important role in the strengthening and
consolidation of certain features of meaning -- mythic precepts if you will -- the ultimate effect of
which has been to inhibit discourse in modern social relations while perverting, at the same time,
our understanding of life process in general. In association with what amounts to a
comprehensive assault on the living organism 'objectivity' has been raised to the level of an
unchallengeable article of faith... Meanwhile, the 'individual' has been enshrined as the end-all-and-be-all of natural process. These amount to twin pillars in a mytho-philosophical edifice which
has been erected in place of discourse and in fundamental denial of its adaptive purpose in nature
and in the human sphere. The modern contribution of the English language to this perversion of
function is easy to point to in its surface aspects, though its roots in living community are
unquestionably ancient and multi-faceted, as the present chapter will seek to demonstrate.
The concept of 'objectivity' shares cultural-cognitive space with a number of related values. Among these are certain assumptions underlying the notion of 'criminal justice'--the idea, for example, that the external circumstances of a crime, viewed as an isolated act by an essentially isolated individual, provide an appropriate basis for the determination of culpability and for the meting of punishment. The 'objective actions' of an individual are the focus of both biology and human law at its best and worst. The same operational paradigm is evident in the pursuit of education, medicine, and in the disposition of rewards and punishments in a wide range of human institutions and endeavors. |
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Movement without Content...
Let me offer an instructive example. The role of language in all this is indicated by the
sudden appearance, in nineteenth century English scientific narration, of the word 'behavior', a
lexical item which had enjoyed, until then, little or no visibility outside the humdrum speech of
British and American domestic interactions. The word had been confined largely to situations
which involved the training of the young. At the turn of the nineteenth century parents and
teachers expected children to conform to a certain standard of conduct. Proper behavior was
regarded as the most important single objective in the ethical training of a child which, once
achieved, would govern the actions of the individual into adulthood, or so we were told.
Yet, before the century reached its closing decades the word 'behavior' had acquired a
rather different constituency. It gained new currency among researchers and educated sectors of
the public. Scientists would begin to speak of the 'behavior' of chemicals and other non-living
materials in the natural environment, now clearly with no sense of moral sanction or hint of
prescription. This odd transformation, and apparent re-direction, of the lexical resources of the
language is sufficiently noteworthy to require explanation. Among the many instances which may
be cited of the influence of English on the culture at large, it would be difficult to find an example
which better illustrates the role language can be called upon to play in the implementation of a
mytho-political program.
Recall that in the beginning of the nineteenth century the biological sciences in particular
were in crisis, deeply challenged from within. The devotion to a strictly materialist understanding
of natural process had seemed to create a serious problem for the new evolutionary sciences. The
new conception, with its apparent rejection of 'divine agency' as a plausible explanation for the
emergence and maintenance of life on earth, had no longer a separate space for 'intent' or
'meaning'. To be sure, the young romantics in this new generation of scientists did not view this
as a problem. They had broken anyway with the Cartesian separation of the physical and the
metaphysical (i.e. the material universe and the act of creation). Intent or meaning, however
manifest, was to be discovered--in hindsight the revelation is hardly surprising--in the place where
it had resided all along: namely in the bodies of organisms collectively and individually. In the
romantic conception meaning was taken for granted. It inhered in biological process (and seems,
moreover, to have been democratically dispersed).
Thus a conflict ensued which consumed the energies of artists, philosophers, and scientists
in England and elsewhere. On the one side were the romantics, to whom all surface evidence of
life was the reflection of internal process. Life was animated, i.e. imbued with meaning or soul.
And emotion was the language in which internal process, or meaning, found surface
representation. What was romantic emotion if not the expression of meaning?
Allied against the romantics was an assortment of scientists and philosophers who were
visible in British and Anglo-American intellectual life especially (and in service, I shall argue in
later chapters, to modern industrialization, its technologies, its institutions and mythic objectives).
These persons embraced what would eventually turn out to be the simplest solution of all: the
internal workings of nature, to the extent these can be said to exist in a practical sense, are of no
relevance, or possible interest, to scientific inquiry. If we may reduce this intellectual position to
its simplest possible formulation: meaning attaches to the observation of nature, not its
production.
Meanwhile, in scientific circles, and in the corridors of academia, the terms 'romanticism'
and 'romantic' underwent a comprehensive devaluation. The 'romantic conception of life' was
variously 'impractical', 'visionary', and/or (the strangest of all these disparaging epithets)
sentimental. The concept of sentimentality seemed somehow to combine emotional excess with
the implication of superficiality!
The concept of 'behavior' helped the latter assortment of scientists, and their many
apologists, to skirt the immense obstacle posed by the fact that the actions of organisms do give
the appearance, unfortunately (even to the most inexperienced observer), of being internally
directed. Thus the value of the word 'behavior' as a potential instrument in the furtherance of
(what would eventually become) the prevailing ideology of inquiry. It effectively addressed the
actions of living organisms without, at the same time, raising a multitude of vexing questions
associated with subjective intent and purpose.
As an English noun, 'behavior' has consistently referred to the external actions of an
organism. For the centuries preceding the appearance of this word in the narrative language of
science, 'behaving' had meant bringing one's actions into accord with certain conventions which
society deemed desirable or 'proper'. (The internal [but at the same time 'objective'] counterpart
of proper 'behavior' was, of course, 'character', a word which would likewise make its entry into
the sciences of the modern period, though much later, to denote, among other things, the effect of
a gene, or combination of genes, on the 'body'.)
But here we approach something like the core meaning of the word in question. For
probably hundreds of years, 'behaving' had meant suppressing one's 'inner nature', what one
might call even the feral side of one's nature, in favor of some externally represented system of
preferences, some code of civilized conduct. It seems now scarcely possible that this word, so
burdened with suggestions of ethical norms and social propriety, would tolerate such an extensive
re-drawing of the semantic field within which it applied. Especially when one considers at whose
bidding the new usage emerged: practitioners of the modern sciences, who had begun to
congratulate themselves on their capacity for 'value-free' analysis and 'objective interpretation' of
the data!
Yet it did, and for reasons which seem transparent in retrospect. Once the implication of
'proper deportment', or lack thereof (in the conduct of the human individual specifically), had
been, not exactly suppressed, but at least successfully side-tracked in the popular imagination,
what remained of the word's semantic content would prove serviceable to the new modes of
inquiry which had come to prominence in the mid-nineteenth century, not just in England but also
in North America and elsewhere. The useful part of the 'old' meaning was the overriding
assumption of denial--denial of the lively object's inner state.
Indeed, this new usage was given a very wide stage. It came to apply to the actions not just of humans but of nearly everything else in the universe of the modern imagination; a universe which was becoming, in the construction of science, as devoid of internally expressed meaning as the world the romantics had turned their back on in the late eighteenth century, the mindless universe of the European Renaissance. The rediscovery of the word 'behavior' is a small episode in that larger story of philosophical reaction; but it is a noteworthy episode nonetheless. |
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Testing the Hypothesis...
The tangent we have probed turns out to be productive, so let us continue. To better
understand the transitional moment in question--the historical event which may be termed
science's 'break with romanticism'--let me ask you to conduct an experiment. Assemble, if you
will, a narrative in the 'first person' which describes that important person's outward response to
some sequence of events. However, try to avoid language which may seem natural to that
person as a means to communicate his/her feelings: nouns which reflect 'experience' or verbs
which imply internally directed action. Adopt a perspective which is external to the reality
described (to the admittedly somewhat limited extent that this is possible). Couch the description
in the 'first person singular' but use what might be sensibly termed the 'objective' part of the
English lexicon, words such as 'appearance' and 'conduct' or, to test the meaning of the lexical
item directly at issue, the word 'behavior'. You can devise your own constructs but the following
may serve to get you going:
My behavior, upon my second appearance in Paris, was startlingly at variance with my subsequent conduct in New York City in the closing days of September... Such an exercise proves immediately instructive. To adopt the external perspective, in describing one's own actions, is to deny one's experience, the basis of action in a universe of living relationships. (The usage is marked in the first person and thus stands out. As a further experiment change the three occurrences of 'my' to 'his'. The alienating effect is not noticeable in the third person where the denial of experience is unmarked, or expected! There will be much more on this topic in the main body of the text.) My appearance, my behavior, my conduct, startlingly at variance...? The English language supplies such structures in abundance. Used with the 'first person' as referent, such words and phrases inevitably create the sense of a dissociated reality. They assemble a world which lacks connection, even though connection is what the actions in question are presumed to be about. With them we concoct, it seems, the discourse of a zombie. The meaning of what the organism experiences as 'life' -- its subjective relation to the world -- is missing. |
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The ascendancy of the 'behavioral approach'...
It is not surprising, therefore, that the word 'behavior' was eagerly adopted for use in the
scientific narratives of the late nineteenth century. With its surreal implication of objective
distance, this word became the perfect instrument to describe the actions of objects in which
internal feelings (and preferences) were assumed to play no role. Thus the word came into use
initially in the narrative language of physics and chemistry, areas of immense popular appeal,
where causal relations were presumed to exist on the visible exterior, where the 'interactions' of
things (another of these new words) were available for surface inspection and could be dealt with
without the need to postulate the existence of 'inner states'. Stripped of its superficial association
with human mores and social convention the word 'behavior' was a convenient means to
designate the predictable actions of chemicals and other non-living objects in the physical
universe. Argyll could speak (Reign Law 1866) of the "behaviour of different substances toward
each other" (emphasis added) without awakening confounding images of 'internal causation' or
(worse yet) 'will'.
It was only a matter of time--the beginning of the twentieth century to be precise: we
discover the word now in use to denote actions by living organisms as well, actions which were
however repetitive, seemingly unconnected to the 'inner life' of the organism in question,
'mindless' like the movement of pebbles on a beach. (It stretches the truth only slightly to say
that such actions had been this all along for 'behaving humans' of 'character'!) The movements
and actions of living entities were seen in important relationships, to be sure, but these were the
predictable relationships of a world which was alienated from the observer, a world which existed
at a safe distance from the point of scientific vantage.
We approach the apparent crux of the matter: what the emerging science of the late
nineteenth century found useful in the word 'behavior' was its affirmation and clarification of a
central exclusionary constraint (albeit one which is rarely formulated). This held that volition--i.e.
the presence of 'conscious intent' at some fundamental level of awareness--is not a necessary
inference when it comes to the study of sentient beings and their actions. In the perspective of the
new men and women of science, living nature was as 'mindless' as it was in the philosophical
heyday of Rene Descartes!
Inspired by the writings of John Watson, the so-called 'behavioral sciences' of the next
century would carry this mythic denial of internal process to an extreme, soon converting all
experience (including the experience of the human being) into a relatively more or less complex
set of reflex actions. This amounted to the total elimination of the internally constructed image in
favor of some external representation of the 'body' (and its presumed relationships), a near
inversion of a chief principle of Cartesian logic but one, significantly, which has left intact the
cardinal principle of the separation of the two (which Antonio Damasio has called 'Descartes'
Error').
It is hardly necessary to state that the systematic derogation of the interior perspective is an
important element in what can be called the 'mythic program' of Western Culture. In this group
of essays I devote a separate chapter to this topic. (For further amplification of the function of
the word 'behavior', in the emergence of the new view of evolution in post-romantic science, see
the section on Darwin in Part II -- Chapter IV of the present compilation of essays.)
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The world from within... The mythic framework, within which this extraordinary project went forward, will be the
principal concern of the chapters which follow. But allow me, in preparing the ground for this
wider understanding of the topic, to address some important preliminary issues which previous
material touched on but left unexplored. First of these is the matter of 'objectivity' itself. To be
sure, in the practice of science, as in the bias of the culture at large, 'objectivity' exists as a certain
well-delineated perspective, a certain approach to the world of living 'nature'. But what is the
basis of the 'objective construction' in the object's own perspective?
Recall that the normal functioning of the social being allows for two contrasting but necessarily interconnected representations of the world as it exists out there. It tends to divide perceived reality into a portion which the organism regards as an extension of its personal identity, an area of shared experience which I refered to, in Part I -- Chapter I, as the extended domain of the biological self. However, in sharp and logical contrast to this area of subjective interest is that portion of the reality external to the organism which is separate, or excluded, from discursive interaction. Discourse is our designation for a general biological process by which internal representations of meaning are expressed, or emoted, by one organism, picked up and internally reconstructed, more or less simultaneously (even in the case of human language), by another. Discursive interaction is a process largely of assimilation, a momentary (often enduring) expansion of the personal 'self' which seems to challenge the individual biology of the organism and its presumed limits. It constitutes the basis of community and much collective action. And when this process fails, as described in the concluding pages of the last chapter, connections are severed and the organism comes out of sync with its social environment. Left intact is the mere surface reality of the organism's existence, its objective experience. The afflicted organism now exists in a world defined by the sensory apparatus alone. All is veneer, structure without content. The low-flying hawk...
Can collective process exist outside the actions of individuals functioning discursively in
community? Probably not. The understanding advanced in these pages of discourse in its
'normal' presentations is circular. My view is that phenomena which appear often as 'collective
actions' are not truly collective in either their nature or origin. They are not collective in a
specific sense: that is, they are the effect of circumstances and relationships which exist beyond
the reach of the discursive function. And in the absence of authentic discourse, which is, finally,
the indispensable foundation of communal process, the response of an assemblage of organisms to
an 'objective stimulus' can not be considered collective in any reasonable sense of the term.
The fact that most of us pay our taxes at the same time every year is not an example of a
'collective action' as the concept is invoked in these pages. It is not directly contingent upon the
expression of emotion in and by our neighbors and ourselves. That is, it is not the result of a
mutually assimilated feeling of fear (let us say), but is the manifestation of an emotion which has
its source outside the defining structure of community. What forces us to pay our taxes is the fear
individually of a 'reality' which lies beyond the plausible reach of the discursive imagination,
though this alien and fear-inspiring 'reality' may well require (somewhat in the manner of the
'low-flying hawk' discussed in the preceding chapter) a direct response from us as assembled
individuals. However, please note that the discursive function has been disabled in the particular
instance. The fear in question tends to be an emotion in isolation, functionally distinct from the
shared fear which spreads throughout a chickenyard upon the sudden appearance of a dark shape
in movement against the sky, an object with wide wing expanse which casts, perhaps, a terrifying
shadow on the ground.
Isolating, marginalizing...
Human discourse exists, at least in theory, independently of language, a point the previous
essay sought to emphasize and to clarify. Nevertheless, language exerts a powerful influence on
human discourse. It provides the very means by which the discursive parameters of a community
are set and social experience is mediated. I intend to show that this influence has been partly
deleterious. Language has marginalized discursive functions which were formerly
complementary. It has denied the subjective content of discourse and seeks to replace this with
the surface detail of a remote and alienated universe. I hope to demonstrate that the effect of
language has been to turn discourse away from its original adaptive purpose. Language has
tended to isolate the individual organism and destroy it as a socially organized entity. Thus,
before we attempt to address the impact of English specifically, on science and a wider range of
human undertakings, we must consider the subsurface of the particular complex of events, its
wider pathology as it were. What are the minimal conditions of spoken language? Are there
dangers to discourse which hide in these primitive evolutionary structures?
The intrusion of the socially disruptive...
The presence of a first person, which has, as its referent in the real world, a human
individual who performs as speaker, appears to be the minimal requirement for spoken discourse
of any kind; while some participation by an important second person, or group of persons, is a
strong secondary presumption. So far so good. In its origins at least, language affirms the
adaptive purpose of discourse. It appears to exhibit a pre-eminently social function. It joins
individuals in what one may assume is collective purpose and action.
But there are suppositions of quite another sort which underlie and shape the production of
language specifically. The necessary division of speech into first and second person, while
implying joint action, tends, at the same time, to be disruptive of the social purpose or has, at
least, the potential to be immensely disruptive. (No-one has suggested, to my knowledge, that
natural language can arise in the absence of the second person. While the first person introduces
speech itself, the product or 'embodiment' of an adaptive action, the second person reveals its
biological purpose which, in this case, is a presumed social value. Notwithstanding the fact that a
prominent field in the study of language devotes itself to the structure of the individual 'sentence',
it is entirely nonsensical to view linguistic discourse as something other than a collective act.
Natural language, like sexual 'reproduction', as Evelyn Fox Keller has helpfully reminded us,
arises in the pairing of organisms in a presumably common cause, not in the vocalizations of
isolated individuals.)
First, implicit in the arrangement described at the top of the paragraph above is the
assumption that discourse is human-centered. In terms of the social situation, and its practical
definition, the first person of linguistic discourse (if not the second person likewise) is assumed to
be a human being. This poses an immense obstacle to the adaptive purpose in the sense that the
use of language, when all is said and done, appears to rest on a principle of social exclusion. The
very existence of language tends to skew human sentiment against the rest of nature. We speak,
and the mere act of speaking separates us from non-human living beings. (This argument assumes
that the concept of discursive interaction, as embodied in the word 'social', may be applied
interspecifically. To the extent that social encounters reveal linguistic differences, language has
the capability to create divisions which are intraspecific as well. We speak in a certain way and
the mere act of speaking tends to separate us from those who speak differently.) Historically, this
bias may have been offset by a countervailing animist construction, touched upon earlier, which
provided for the extensive participation of non-human elements in the framing of a collective
discourse. (Modern languages reveal traces of this ancient cultural dispensation and may, in fact,
provide the best evidence for its primitive character.)
Secondly, since the first person occupies the discursive vantage point, it follows that the
world, as seen from this important location, is a construction--to a very considerable extent--of
that same entity. By the very terms of linguistic discourse, the second person becomes a creature
of the first. The apparently subordinate relationship of the one speech role to the other thus poses
a danger to discourse, if by discourse we mean a socially purposeful interaction amongst
organisms and two-way exchanges of significant information. This danger was likely mitigated in
the experience of early humans through structures which provided for 'give and take' or which
were, at least, not inhibitive of significant 'give and take'.
Thirdly, linguistic discourse presupposes a separation of speech roles. Language imposes,
by its very nature, a serial construction on collective action. First 'I' speak, then 'you' speak.
The linguistic function, though collective in its underlying purpose, tends to be divided in its
actual performance. Only on the stage and in other ritual settings do persons speak in unison.
Natural speech arises from separate acts, the product of separate 'minds'. (The assumption of a
major role for language, in the ultimate appearance of social forms which favor sequence and
singularity of social purpose, seems inescapable.) That this was perceived as a danger to two-way
exchange may be inferred from the fact that various formal devices have arisen for minimizing the
sense of separation which arises from the serial construction language imposes on discourse.
Languages appear to have provided, situationally, for the formal collapse of personal distinctions.
The first and second person plurals of most modern languages, e.g. the 'we' and historical
'you' of English (the 'wir' and 'ihr' of modern German), are evidence of past attempts to come to
terms with disjunctures which were inherent in the separation of speech roles. Many languages,
including those ancestral to the modern languages of Europe, employed so-called 'duals' as a
special mechanism to accomplish the impossible: to join the second person singular to the first, or
to bring others, perhaps those who were not even present, into the speech act itself.
The usurpation of function...
However, such 'solutions' pose an obvious danger in themselves: the individual who
functions as first person may attempt, through devices similar to those described above, to
maintain his or her discursive edge. Masking his/her actual intent--through the use of mechanisms
which are ostensibly inclusive--the first person may seek, in fact, to do away with discursive
reciprocity altogether. The 'we' of the medical care-giver (or the patronizing adult) is the
reflection, perhaps, of an ancient stratagem. The use of 'we', in this ostensibly inclusive sense,
preempts any serious response on the part of the patient (or 'child'). The first person brings the
second person into the speech act while, at the same time, denying her/him an actual voice. It is
potentially lethal to the social purpose of discourse when role-reversals are institutionally blocked
and the flow of information becomes one-directional as in modern advertizing and in other modes
of public 'communication' where the individual is the mere object of the discourse. A task for
science would be to consider the ultimate effects of such a massive disabling of an adaptive
function. It is revealing that neither biologists nor linguists address such questions.
(The options, quite simply, are to view the disabling of a function positively--as adaptive in itself--or as the manifestation of a social pathology. The concept of 'pathology' depends, to be sure, on assumptions of value and perspective. But so does the notion of evolutionary 'success' which is a core assumption of Neo-Darwinian analysis. The issue is complicated, of course, by the fact that innovations which are 'adaptive' in the short-term often prove to be 'maladaptive' in the larger evolutionary picture. We are forced, it seems, to pay for our short-term 'successes'.) |
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Distancing...
Finally, and far less subtle in its effects, we see the contrary tendency in language, the
tendency to exaggerate the natural separations the speech roles impose on discourse. There
seems, as we reflect on language development in the historical period especially, to be a notable
pressure to increase, situationally, the distance between the roles in question. That is, language
invariably attempts (for social reasons which are not integral to the main thrust of the present
argument) to move the second person to the periphery of discourse, away from its center. This
move is accomplished, typically, through the substitution of a plural form for the more intimate
singular and/or a more remote third person for the second. English 'you' is a distancing element
historically. It is a second person plural, as is French 'vous'. German 'Sie' is not merely a plural
formation: it arises, grammatically, out of the domain of the third person, which has the practical
effect, as we shall see below, of taking the second person out of the discourse altogether. Less
extremely, many languages have responded to a perceived need for social 'distancing', by
invoking the third person singular as a form of address.
Spanish 'usted' uses a third person singular verb form. In certain prescribed social
situations eighteenth century German used the grammatical singular 'Er', or 'Sie', as a form of
address. English dialects exist today in which adults address children and adolescents with the
alienating 'he' and 'she'. In English, playful sarcasm sometimes makes use of the distancing third
person forms of address. 'What is Jane [the name of the person being addressed] up to today?'
Though not germane to the immediate issue, it should be noted that the need for 'distance',
in the actualization of the roles of speech, may have arisen with the emergence of agriculture.
The structures referred to here as 'distancing elements' likely came into existence at an historical
moment when social relations themselves were undergoing 'objectification' (and a process of
attenuation), when humans had begun to 'interact' with each other less as whole organisms (who
were, at once, capable of representing themselves as 'feeling individuals' capable of
reconstructing the feelings of the other) and more as surface entities. This major transitional
event in human discourse likely paralleled the larger concentrations of human population (with its
perceived need for social stratification) which agriculture appears to have facilitated(2).
The potential for separation, for the creation of distance among the critical elements of
discourse, increases markedly with the entry of the third person--i.e. the persons, things, and
objects on which discourse is (or may be) focused. Here the pronounced likelihood of separation
arises from the fact that the so-called 'third person' is not a 'third person' as such. That is, the
third person is not an active participant in an imaginable three-way exchange but rather
something, or someone, which enters discourse on the horizon of experience, not necessarily at
(or even near) its immediate center.
The first and second persons of discourse entail much deictic reference. For example: the
meaning of the words 'I' and 'you' is revealed only in the physical context of the discourse. I
know who 'you' are because I am talking to 'you'. 'You' are physically present. Likewise, 'you'
know who 'I' am because 'I' am standing in front of 'you'. 'You' and 'I' make up the 'center'
of the discourse, and this relationship is underscored through our physical presence.
The third person, by contrast, represents a major linguistic (and social) innovation. The
third person does not involve deixis in the uncomplicated sense outlined above. To be sure, in
some instances the referent (which may be a human being but can, as easily, be some other object
in the external environment) is revealed primarily through deixis. That is, you know what it is that
I am talking about because I point to something which lies within your field of vision and thus
within your capacity for direct experience. The speaker may use, in addition, other deictic
references which are helpful (often redundantly), demonstratives, for example, such as 'this' or
'that'.
A symbolically ordered universe...
However, the third person referent is not necessarily present physically. The third person
is not, of necessity, available for pointing to and experiencing directly. Thus, it happens that in
human discourse the entry of the third person may necessitate its 'naming'. It is my contention
that this introduction of a third person reference (in the form of a 'named' object or relationship),
amounts to an early phase in the construction of a symbolic (and ultimately 'objective') reality.
Though the 'naming' of a 'thing' ultimately entails its isolation, first 'named' were probably
systems of complex relationship. To say 'mother', or 'sky', was not 'originally' to pronounce the
name of an 'object', considered as an isolated entity, but to evoke a significant relationship (see
Part II -- Chapter V and the discussion of metaphor). This may account for the fact that
common roots have now strikingly different surface representations (e.g. 'mother' and its cognate
'matter'; or 'sky' and its surprising cognate form 'house' which I shall discuss in Part II --
Chapter VI). Only as a much later development, in its seemingly inevitable rush to leave
metaphor (and relationship) behind, does language develop the capacity to assemble the world in
an entirely 'symbolic' fashion, in terms of conceptually isolated 'objects' and their 'names'.
Symbol and metaphor...
The terms 'symbol' and 'metaphor' are both useful. In conventional usage symbols denote
'objects' (typically in a one-to-one relation), whereas metaphors tend to delineate complex
'relationship'. The lexical cognates 'house' and 'sky', for example, are to be derived, historically
and linguistically, from a root metaphor which designates a particular relation of the organism to
the perceived universe, though each is free to serve, naturally, as a 'symbol' for something else.
The use of symbols may be more or less arbitrary, as in the language of mathematics (and in the
letters of the alphabet), but may also be consistent with a body of metaphor which has wide
recognition across a population of organisms.
I examine the lighted screen of the computer monitor in front of me. The words and sentences, as I compose them, consist of strings of orthographic 'symbols' which may, in fact, be essentially arbitrary in many of their surface aspects. However, the presentation as a whole, in the creation of which my body has offered itself as a participating element, draws on a central metaphor of our culture. Though this has not been my 'intent' or particular expression of preference, the display I am helping to assemble promotes a certain relation to the world. The individual letters of the alphabet, their serial arrangement, the interspersion of spaces and punctuation, the distinctive format of the display--all this has to do with a set of cultural preferences which affirm (quite obviously) a visual representation of experience, an affirmation, to the literal exclusion of every sensory alternative, of the mythic notion that only what we see is to be believed. The visual image with its enormous and overriding cultural value is the expression, or physical 'embodiment', of a root metaphor in our collective experience. (The emergence of 'symbol' [and subsequent denial of 'metaphor'] will be treated extensively in the concluding portions of Part Two -- Chapter Five. There we shall see this transitional event as the crucial mile-marker of modern human culture.) |
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Precondition for hegemony...
Though initially manifest, perhaps, in the innocuous reporting, by a first person to a second,
of some action by a third person ('x says...', 'y wants...'), the third person reference was soon to
encompass the whole of the world which was external to the discourse. The difficulty this posed
to the social purpose of discourse was that the images the third person ushered in were not
derived, necessarily, from the participants' exposure to the real world but were, in fact, a
construction of the discourse itself. The third person was, in a real and socially significant sense,
a passive creature of the discursive will and purpose (much as, internally, the second person was a
partial assemblage of the first). The invention of the third person offered abundant opportunities
for division and heteronomous manipulation by those at the center.
It appears likely that the third person of human discourse made its effective appearance in
the context of a major social transformation, a sweeping shift in consciousness which altered the
collective construction of the world while greatly expanding the function of language. For with
the appearance of the grammatical third person the world was/is no longer directly engaged. The
world came/comes to exist outside the discursive reality of experience. It had/has the potential to
become artifact entirely, something quite separate from the increasingly restricted universe of
persons and objects which were/are directly available to the senses. Such a comprehensive (and
progressive) alienation is certainly a worthy subject for further investigation. I find its
implications provocative if greatly disturbing.
Integrative failure...
We now return to the specific theme with which we began this chapter. Language brings to
discourse a construction of the world which has been extensive in its impacts. Though all the
properties discussed above--properties which are latent in the terms of the discourse and thus
probably endemic in human experience--have been significant contributing factors, the 'third
person' of the linguistic paradigm -- we shall be discussing eventually the English language in
particular -- has had an uncommon mission in the shaping of the world-view which science now
embraces as its own and seeks to build on.
To reduce a complex subject to a few suggestions (which are scarcely adequate), the
grammar of English had effectively prepared science for the denial of internal experience which
'objective inquiry', in the service of the larger cultural agenda, appears to require. The northern
dialects of West Germanic had long since destroyed the bonds which formalize, in the normal
perceptions of the speakers of many other languages, the sense of a connection between living
and non-living structure, between humans and non-human nature. The grammatical ties which
would join living organisms to each other have been largely severed in the dialects of English.
English no longer tolerates the grammatical gender distinctions which speakers of other languages
(in Europe and elsewhere) take for granted. Structures which evoke the sense of a shared identity
in nature (an identity which is biologically based) maintain, in numerous other languages to which
English may be compared,(3) a conceptual framework for the integration of experience, for the
sense of a wholeness in nature. Speakers of English lack exposure to this integrating influence--at
least at the significant level of mytho-grammatical awareness. Nor is this salient feature of our
language to be considered an expression of 'egalitarianism' (in the metaphoric guise of
grammatical leveling).
On the contrary. Unlike Finnish, for example, which strives, pretty much, to eliminate
gender across the board (and can thus truly be said to be gender-neutral in the fundamental
psycho-linguistic reality of the situation), English goes out of its way to maintain the designation
'she' in situations where a cynic might discern an expressly political purpose, in representations of
nature as either a stubborn and uncontrollable entity--winds, storms, driving rains, the raging sea--or where the material referent stands in an explicitly 'artifactual' relation to male creativity: large
engines, airplanes, ships, trucks, etc. It appears we tread on ground which is sacred; for it is
extremely rare to hear mention of the distributions discussed in this important regard, though their
presence in the culture is conspicuous and pervasive.
The basis of 'personification' in English...
On a recent trip to the US I was in a hospital waiting room for fifteen minutes, or so, and
entered into conversation with two gentlemen whom I did not know but who turned out, to my
surprise, to be from my home town in Northern Wisconsin. It was February. Storm clouds had
gathered and it was starting to snow. In no more than a few minutes of harmless banter, the
pronoun 'she' was used four or five times to refer to the threatening weather and its adverse
effects: "She looks like she's starting to snow..." (the weather), "she's gonna be slippery driving
home..." (the highway), "she's getting cold..." (the temperature), etc. It would be too much to
see invidious intent in such ordinary usage. Nevertheless, the automatic, seemingly reflexive, use
of such 'personifications' (which are, in reality, not personifications at all) strengthens harmful
divisions which the culture by no means considers trivial. Intended or not, their effect is to
degrade the human female, not humanize nature.
Finns do not know the distinctions expressed in English by the seemingly harmless
pronominal pairings 'he-she', 'him-her'. As strange as this may appear to speakers of
Indoeuropean, who may believe that such third-person distinctions are only natural after all, in
Finnish this position in the paradigm is represented by only a single form: 'haen' (and a
bewildering multiplicity of case variants). Finnish does have the third person pronoun 'se',
meaning 'it', but this form is often used interchangeably with 'haen' whereby third person
distinctions, in the singular, collapse altogether.
What are the implications of the fact that English, by contrast, tends to move the form 'she'
into the category of use normally occupied by the form 'it'? If Finnish identifies nature with
general humanity, then out of what structures of the collective imagination does English
(harmlessly or invidiously) identify 'nature' with the human female?
Swedish, like English, has collapsed the grammatical distinction between masculine and feminine nouns. However, it preserves the old neuter classification which results, essentially in a two-gender system (in which sex, however, plays little surface role). The non-neuter classification includes most designations for people and a host of other animals, with whom Nordics have traditionally identified, as well as certain large plants: oak, birch, and spruce, for example, which had religious meaning in pre-Christian arctic culture. The effect of this classification was to connect users of the language (at the mytho-conceptual level of perception) to objects in the natural world for which the traditional culture expressed a marked affinity. The sweep across the lexicon is actually quite extraordinary. Swedish words for supper, old age, car, railroad station, farmer, flowers, thunder, village, violin, fruit, springtime, garden, birds, honey, dogs and cats, frost, rocks, huts, and grammar all belong to the personal, or non-neuter, classification! On the other hand, many living objects, especially parts of living objects--e.g. heart, evergreen needles, blood, eyes, ears, legs, heads, fingers--are thought of as neuter. (A corpse [Swedish lik], an object which is clearly no longer 'whole' in the original Germanic meaning of the word, is also neuter.) In Swedish the word for 'child' (barn) is neuter: the child was perhaps thought of, traditionally, as 'not yet complete'(4). |
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The weakened presence...
Consider the world as represented in the distribution of some common English pronouns. The presentation below attempts to capture, in its progression from left to right across the page, the sense of an attenuation in the grammatical bonds which would connect humans to each other and (ultimately) to nature.
The pronouns of English maintain a division -- more clearly demarcated here than in any
language available for comparison -- between the world of human discourse and the world of
material 'nature'. They strive to create the sense of an increasing distance between two ends of a
continuum which begins with the subjective 'I', the all-important locus of action in the English
universe, which by-passes the singular second person altogether (see Epilogue to Part One --
Chapter III) and then moves to the outer edge of the discursive reality where not much, in fact,
appears to matter on a personal level.
Structurally reinforced in ways I shall enumerate, the sequence I (thou) you he she it has
the practical effect of moving the varied objects in the external world progressively away from the
center of the discourse, away from the all-important vantage point of the speaker. The precision
and extraordinary economy, with which English achieves this end, is nowhere equaled in the
European community of languages. I want to emphasize, at the risk of being repetitive, the
correspondence between the position on this continuum of these simple referential elements and
the discursive reality of the culture at large which this language expresses (and of which modern
science is both progeny and principal advocate).
Though counter-examples spring readily to mind (which are in themselves revealing), the
English pronouns 'he' and 'she' tend, by and large, to designate human beings. The very fact is
instructive that a large class of special cases (already alluded to) are called personifications by
English and American lexicographers. The very label demonstrates the bias I am discussing. It
seems we can 'animate' living nature only by imputing to 'it' human qualities. (One must keep in
mind always the question whether the 'personification' of nature is not actually a degradation of
the 'person'.) This quality of the English imagination has been previously discussed and will be
elaborated further in subsequent pages.
An ideologically committed speaker of English might protest: how can one attach
importance to such a trivial observation? Is it not perfectly natural that the language system 'we
all use and depend upon' should choose to separate human beings from mere 'animals'--as well as
from trees and rocks and the rest of the material debris which litters the surface of the earth?
The difference is immediately revealed when we compare English to other languages which
might have competed with it for world attention. The 'er' and 'sie' of German, which the
linguistically unsophisticated might take to be semantic equivalents of 'he' and 'she', are, in fact,
equivalents in only the most approximate sense. (The pronominal 'es' of German, by contrast
with English 'it', which may appear, likewise deceptively, to be an actual counterpart of the
German, is limited essentially to referents, human and non-human, which have neuter gender;
although it may be used as an anticipatory element in a sentence; or as a pronoun to designate an
antecedent structure which is somehow abstract or syntactically complex, functions it does happen
to share, in a general way, with its English 'equivalent'.)
These High German counterparts of 'he' and 'she' may have, as their respective referents,
any number of objects in the human or non-human universe. In German the sole requirement is
that the pronoun have the same gender as the 'object' in question, a named antecedent (usually) in
the immediate context of the discourse. Viewed together, the pronouns of this close 'cousin' to
English reveal a vast network of material relatedness in nature, a sense of connection which is
conceptually vivid (if 'merely' grammatical in its surface manifestations).
An animist residue...
German romantic poets exploited this feature of their language to the hilt. Consider
Eichendorff's famous lines (nearly untranslatable into English):
Es war als hätt' der Himmel It is night (we learn later in the poem) and there are stars in the sky. Earth is asleep but
dreams of the day-light hours when the sun kissed her surface. I once heard linguist Roman
Jakobson discuss this opening quatrain of the poem. He said the grammar of the language had
put Eichendorff in a bind. Conventions of the day did not allow him to mention directly such an
action as the 'sun kissing the earth' because, alas, in German both nouns are feminine. (It may be
mentioned, not entirely irrelevantly, that in Germanic languages the 'weaker' of the two most
prominent heavenly bodies--the 'moon'--is masculine.) Naming the active agent would have put a
'Lesbian construction' -- these were the famous Russian formalist's very words -- on the central
metaphor of his poem, a 'problem' which would not have arisen if Eichendorff had written in
French or Spanish, he pointed out, languages in which the word for the 'sun' is masculine -- and
the weaker 'moon', in better observance of patriarchal myth, is feminine (he might have added but
did not).
So Eichendorff depicted this relationship in terms which were acceptable to the sensibilities
of his nineteenth century German-speaking audience. The concept 'Himmel' (English 'sky'),
fortunately masculine in Germanic languages, saved the poet from a near disaster! This
notwithstanding, the ancient affinity between sun and earth would not be suppressed. It continued
to serve as a powerful background element in his poem. Eichendorff invoked here a metaphor
which may be as old, and as complex, as human sexuality itself(5).
Barren and isolated...
Nor is German the exception among languages spoken in Europe. The exception, indeed,
turns out to be English, this geographically isolated 'sister' to languages spoken in the Germanic
uplands of Central Europe. One might assert, with only a touch of hyperbole, that English has
accomplished the near-impossible: it has reduced the complex and variegated world of external
'nature' to a single pronominal representation--the barren and isolated 'it' of the English
imagination.
The division of worlds is maintained in the distribution of the pronouns 'who' and 'what'
(with 'that' occupying, in its function as a demonstrative and relative pronoun, a grammatical and
conceptual space halfway between): 'Who was at the door?' but 'What is crossing the road?'.
('The man who came to dinner' but 'The mouse that roared'.) In general, 'he' and 'who' (not
'she' which is a matter of functional significance) are reserved for the important world of human
interaction(6). The following sentence would likely strike a native speaker of English as eccentric:
'The insect, who bit me, was no bigger than a gnat'.
The fact may be noteworthy that the grammatical gender of Indoeuropean rarely extends to
the second and first person, the functioning elements of discourse which obviously lie closest to
its center. In Romance languages, grammatical gender does affect adjectives which have first and
second person antecedents--'Encantado!' is the old-fashioned Spanish response for men ('Pleased
to meet you!) and 'Encandada!' for women--but never does the distinction affect the form of the
pronouns themselves. In general, grammatical gender (and the more explicit forms of social
separation) is reserved for the third person, the vast world at the horizon of our experience. Thus
an exclusionary principle, which significantly informs the modern perspective, may inhere in the
narrative function itself.
Reduced capacity for experience...
Join with me in exploring some further implications of this complex issue. Consider,
initially, the fact that all languages possess the capacity to specify, with ease and a relative lack of
ambiguity, the perspective from which the actions of an organism are viewed, evaluated, reported,
contemplated, etc. As one might expect, the pronouns of a language are significant contributors
in the framing of this perspective. The sentence
I feel good and its approximate equivalents in numerous other languages, identifies not just the speaker, the
source of the utterance, but establishes also the presumed source of the experience. The first
person pronoun establishes that the 'feeling' (of well-being) flows out of the same state of
individual awareness as the words themselves. However, though the speaker and the subject of
the experience happen to be one-and-the-same in the particular case, such structural congruence
is not necessary to the integration of discourse.
Notice that the same situation prevails when the speaker transfers his/her attention to
selected persons existing on the discursive horizon of experience. The sentence
He feels good points to a third person as the source of the narrated experience, though it gives rise to a notable
compounding of perspective. The speaker, whose identity is not known in the absence of
contextual clues, continues, in theory, to express the primary experience of the discourse. But
this experience is not identical to that of the subject of the sentence as represented by the pronoun
'he'. The perspective of the first person narrator, whatever that may entail and however it finds
expression, is distinct from the presumed perspective of the third person, i.e. the characters and
events which are narrated. This is not to suggest that first and second person narration does not
exist. First person narration is, in fact, quite usual in story-telling. While second person
narration, as the construct below illustrates, appears to be merely a variant form of third person
narration:
It is Friday September 16, eight a.m. You are driving north. As you approach the corner of fifth and Madison you see somebody stumble out of an alley onto the sidewalk... Here the use of the second person, combined with present tense verb forms, has the effect of reducing the discursive distance which normally separates audience and the characters and events of the narration. The device, popular in TV crime shows of the fifties and sixties, was intended to make the audience feel all this was happening to them, right now! In narrative language multiple perspectives are common-place, each nested in the other. In
the sentence
He feels good about his wife's willingness to help out the narrator imputes an experience to the 'grammatical subject' of the sentence who is given, in
turn, the chance to impute experience to yet another who is located even further down the
discursive 'road'. (The metaphor is apt. The horizon is extended through the compounding of
perspectives which can be visualized as a 'road' which brings the events and persons of the
narration ever further from the discursive vantage point.) Though himself an 'object' on the
horizon, who is further from the center than the unspecified 'second person' (or 'audience'), the
third person is nonetheless a human being to whom the narrator has granted a nearly full capacity
to 'feel', and to experience the world, and to recognize, besides, that same ability in others. Now
consider the sentence
It feels good. If the 'grammar' were straightforward, and the sole indicator of narrative perspective, then
'it', or the entity 'it' represents, would be granted the same capacity for experience as the
antecedents of 'I', 'she', or 'he'. However, this is not what happens. The substitution of 'it' for
these personal pronouns has an effect which is truly astonishing. In its unmarked meaning--that
is, in the meaning which surfaces immediately in the absence of elaboration--the sentence 'It feels
good' shifts the entire locus of the experience back to the narrator (and back to the important
world of human experience). The 'feeling', which we readily grant to a second or third person as
human being, is only awkwardly extended to the 'it' of the grammatical imagination. In the
world, as constructed by the English imagination, the pronoun 'it' suffers a greatly reduced
capacity for genuine experience. The thing we call 'it' has little value as a subject in itself. Its
referent, if the referent indeed exists in the real world, is merely an object to which we react, an
entity with surface aspect and little else. It is, at most, an item in the material world which 'feels
good' to the touch.
The strange case of 'shall'...
In the Standard British English of the nineteenth century and later, the words 'I shall...',
used in the traditional formation of the future tense, were widely felt to convey a certain semantic
content having to do with a specific attitude, or internal disposition, of the speaker, toward the
action in question. The sentence
I shall leave tomorrow for Paris was not just another example of futurity (as, for example, in the relatively neutral Iré mañana a
Paris of Spanish grammatical convention or the German Ich werde morgen nach Paris reisen) but
seemed, all things being equal, to invest the speaker's assertion with a strong volitional, or
subjective, underpinning. That is: it was the speaker's expressed intent to leave for France.
Now consider the surprising consequence of exchanging the first person pronoun for the second: It always intrigues me to consider the semantic effects of substitutions of this kind. In the
first sentence we have an example of futurity, complicated (semantically) by a certain amount of
'determination' on the speaker's part (as a dictionary might describe the implication). But in the
second example, what was a mere complication of the grammar becomes the source (and focus)
of a quite different message (now socially disruptive): one in which the first person of the
discursive interaction coerces and (perhaps) threatens the second.
In other words, through a simple manipulation of the grammar 'you' and 'me' are thrown into a social relation of the dominated and the dominating respectively. Meanwhile, futurity is merely incidental to the process. The feature of intent becomes the vehicle by which an important mythic precept is articulated: the expression of 'will' and 'feeling' is the sole prerogative of her/him who speaks. (I am happy to report that the language itself has detected and resisted this pressure. The word shall has now little productive existence outside the language of the law. It has been replaced altogether by one of two alternative forms: by the subjunctive should--the so-called 'moral imperative'--which greatly softens the haughty and legalistic tone of the present indicative, or by the auxiliary will, which has now largely taken over the conjugation of the future tense.) |
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From within or without...
Though the verb 'feel' may be unique, in its ability to form a minimal pair of the kind
adduced earlier ('he feels good'/'it feels good'), there are others--all pertaining to the senses--which have the same 'reversible' property. (Seem, look, taste, smell; not audition, interestingly,
which requires separate verbs to accomplish the same alteration of perspective, e.g. hear as
opposed to sound.) They are 'reversible' in the sense that they possess the capacity to represent
internal structure from a vantage point which lies, alternatively, inside or outside the boundary of
the organism (though the 'feeling' has an inevitable surface representation regardless of the
perspective in the specific case).
These verbs furnish us with a somewhat larger body of material to test the peculiar
disposition in question. To begin a phrase with 'I feel...', 'I seem...', 'I look...', 'I taste...', 'I
smell...' is to provide the 'second person' with a particular expectation: namely, that the
experience, about to be described, has its vantage point in the subject of the sentence or, which
comes down to the same thing in the case in question, in the speaker him or herself. As strange as
this may seem to common-sense perceptions, changing 'I' to 'it' in the cited sequence of
examples--try this if you will ('it feels...', it seems...', 'it looks...', 'it tastes...', 'it smells...')--does
nothing to change the discursive vantage point! It remains with the speaker though the subject of
the phrase, in the completion anticipated by the listener, is a 'third-person' pronoun.
In other words, English transforms a grammatical subject--which may, in another
conceptual environment, represent the near totality of the world external to the human being--into
a mere object of human sensory experience. Such an objective transformation is a source of the
'feelings' and 'images' speakers of English assemble with regard to the external world and its
complex relationships. In English-speaking countries those who 'feel' otherwise are forced into
silence, or become poets, or must mount extraordinary campaigns to promote their contrary and
eccentric positions. The 'objectification of nature', which modern science sponsors as its own,
has deep roots in the English language. It has been a feature of English dialects for many
centuries, certainly since long before there was an 'objective science' to talk about.
(One is hard-pressed to defend a meaningful distinction between what I have called the
objectification of nature and what our culture values as objectivity in science and social
dispensations. I tend to use the two appellations interchangeably -- as expressions of the same
mythic-ideological constraint. They each reflect the denial of internal process and provide thus
the rationale for the 'management' and expropriation of nature and its resources.)
One searches unsuccessfully for a comparable example from German. The verb 'fühlen' is
far more restricted in its usage than its English cognate. The meaning conveyed by 'he feels
good' requires, in German, either a reflexive or an alternative construction altogether. The
pairing 'er fühlt sich wohl' and 'es fühlt sich wohl' certainly turns up no surprises. The feeling
expressed is that of the grammatical subject in both cases. German appears able at least to
imagine a world in which all living entities possess the capacity to experience and to 'feel',
though the language (and culture) may rank them and treat them 'objectively' in other respects.
This idea is stated succinctly in the familiar aphorism 'alles was lebt fühlt' or 'everything which
lives feels', a sentiment which may sound quaint to the sophisticated ear of the speaker of English.
A living example...
Indoeuropean, though hardly an early arrival on the linguistic scene, seems nevertheless to have possessed (I am inclined to say retained) the lexical means for the designation of a kind of social knowledge based on the direct assimilation of 'feelings' in others. The verb 'to know', in the sense of 'to be acquainted with', is derived from an ancient root which appears to have encompassed the full dimension of discursive interaction among living organisms. Additional reflexes of this ancient form are can, kin plus the loanwords gnosis, genus and their numerous variants. We have, besides, Scottish ken, Spanish conocer, German kennen, können, Swedish känna, for example, all derived, comparative linguistics assumes, from the same root. The reconstructed Indoeuropean form en- (or no-) appears to have entailed a good deal more than the mere cognizance of surface identity, though this is nearly the full measure of the meaning of its modern English reflex. (Actually, the verb 'to know' does suggest additionally a state of mutual interaction, if only superficial. To say you know someone still implies, I hope, that he/she knows you.) If the ancestral meaning can be adequately reconstructed, on the basis of forms existing in surviving languages, or in ancient languages known through written records, the root had 'originally' the double meaning of sensory apprehension, on the one hand, i.e. the ability to perceive and evaluate sensations which emanate from important sources adjacent to the perceiving organism. But it seems also to have designated the peculiar property of the living organism to bring its own 'inner life' to the surface, to produce something from within. The Indoeuropean form appears to have embraced the remarkable capacity of the living organism to produce representations of internal process which find their own way in the world, representations of feelings, ideas, structures of the imagination, even the production of progeny. Perhaps the English verb 'generate', a cognate (by way of Latin) with the indigenous form 'know', captures some part of this ancient meaning. In the evolution of the Indoeuropean form, from which these structures have evolved, we
see a near total elimination of the part of the meaning which pertains to the expression and
apprehension of feeling, a development which seems to have taken place somewhat across the
board. If a map of Germanic were to be constructed, in which modern meanings of shared roots
are compared across linguistic boundaries, the forms in question would stand out as distinct
isoglosses. German shows traces of the meaning which English has lost altogether (but which
Scandinavian, interestingly, has preserved nearly intact).
Kennst du das Land, wo die Zitronen blühn, If one sets out to translate the German of Mignon's haunting lines into English, one runs
immediately into the problem alluded to in the above paragraph: what may seem, at first, to be a
reasonable approximation of the italicized word -- English 'know' (or 'knowst') for its German
cognate 'kennst' -- may, in fact, be the poorer choice. The verb 'kennen', in conjunction
especially with a singular form of address (which, thanks to complex political and social process,
no longer exists in English), evokes the sense of an affinity which goes quite beyond the mere
memory of surface 'interaction' which English 'know' weakly suggests. The lush southern
landscape is vivid in the young girl's imagination; it is not just an objective reconstruction of
surface impressions from the distant past.
Moreover, as the German form provides a striking contrast to English derivatives of the
same Indoeuropean root, so does the Scandinavian form stand out against its German
counterpart. Perhaps because it was geographically peripheral to many of the processes described
in this book, Scandinavian retains a much closer approximation to (what we may assume was) the
'original sense' of the reconstructed Indoeuropean. The literal (and primary) meaning of Modern
Swedish känna (< Old Norse kenna) is 'to experience' or 'to feel'.
Grammatical 'Mood'--a reflection of internal process...
Though a subordinate relation of the one speech role to the other may be implicit in the use
of language, speaking is not to be viewed necessarily as an attempt by the first person to gain
control of the social situation, though the act may well appear to serve the interests of the speaker
primarily. The speaker gives surface expression to an internal state of discomfort, let us say,
which the second person may be in a position to help remedy. Though not spelled out, the words
may urge a certain course of action upon the second person. However, this is not in itself a threat
to the discursive exchange, its fundamental authenticity and integrity. The representation of
'feeling', by which the first person's intent is revealed, may remain intact. Also intact may be the
latitude the first person provides for a potential response. The second person may be free to
'assimilate' that feeling, or not.
The matter of the action one wishes to urge upon another enters discourse often by
inference, disguised as a declarative representation of an internal state. I reveal, for example, the
fact that 'I am hungry'. But my fervent hope and expectation is that the second person, the driver
of the car (let us say) in which I am presently a passenger, will properly interpret this
representation and take measures to exit the freeway at a proximal time and in an appropriate
location.
The ways in which such exchanges play out depends heavily on the history of the
relationship, a matter there is no need to pursue at the present time. However, I want to
emphasize that this masking of an 'ulterior purpose' does not, in itself, indicate the failure, or
weakness, of the discursive interaction in which we two are engaged. A threat to the discursive
function looms only when structures emerge the express purpose of which is to block the
expression of feeling, be this from the vantage point of the first or second person, i.e. from the
vantage point of production or assimilation of feeling. However, even in what may appear to be
an extreme case much will depend on the particular history of the social interaction.
As it happens, language provides explicit means by which feelings surface (or are,
conversely, short-circuited). Here we approach the intriguing area of the grammar traditional
linguists call 'mood'. 'Mood' is revealed in the use of forms of the verb which convey, in and of
themselves, a particular attitude on the part of the speaker toward the discourse and its varied
content. This 'attitude' is comprised of certain assumptions which, though crucial to the
discourse, are not necessarily directly expressed.
For example, the 'indicative mood' tends to accompany what the speaker believes are
assertions of fact: I walk when the sun shines. Or it accompanies inquiries about presumed
matters of fact: When do you do your walking? The attitude which underlies the indicative form
of a declarative sentence is the belief that the assertion is valid or, in the case of interrogatives,
that the facts can be validly determined. Verb phrases in the indicative mood carry the conviction
that, for the speaker, the world exists (or has existed, or will come to exist) in a particular way.
All this is, of course, the expressed content of the 'mind' of the particular speaker, subject always
to rejection by those who hold different 'opinions'.
By contrast, the 'subjunctive mood--or, at least, the formations referred to frequently as
expressions of the 'subjunctive mood'--is regularly invoked for a wide range of situations which
appear to be contrary to fact: I would walk if the sun were shining. Or to indicate doubt: For all I
know the sun could be shining in Florida at this very moment. Or to indicate conjecture or
inference: She would be about forty years old because she went to school with my daughter. Or
to indicate desire or wish: I would enjoy taking a walk this afternoon--oh, if only I could take a
walk this afternoon! Or to indicate possibility: it might be raining; or a guarded probability: It
would likely be raining there right now. Or an absolute necessity: It would have to start raining
for me to change my mind. The boundaries between these usages are hardly more distinct than
the uncertain conditions they are traditionally invoked to deal with and describe.
Also somewhat indistinct semantically are the boundaries between subjunctive and indicative. The difference between 'It has to be raining in Chicago (right now)' and 'It would have to be raining there' is probably (would likely be) insignificant. The issue is most complex and needs to be dealt with fully in another context. A grammatical denial of internal process...
Don't miss out! Call me when you get back! Send for your free sample! Remain seated until the aircraft comes to a complete stop! Grab your share in cash and prizes! Get a life! Report for jury duty! Save up to 50%! Own one and you'll understand! Drop by for a drink! Stand up and be counted! Don't take no for an answer! Give me a break! Here we approach the third category of what Classical Grammarians often call 'mood',
namely, the imperative. Strictly speaking the imperative does not conjecture, wonder, wish, infer,
postulate, hypothesize, or inquire. Nor does it make statements the speaking person believes are
matters of fact (or are not matters of fact) though such statements may be imbedded in the
structure of the sentence as unsupported claims.
The imperative demands an action by the listener of a specified kind and expects no
response from that person other than a straightforward performance of that action. It feels no
need to explain the injunction itself or to apologize for the abrupt tone of the delivery; nor does it
ask the second person to submit a list of reasons why the action should not be undertaken. The
imperative assumes a direct causal relation between an essentially disembodied verbal 'command'
and the action it requires. And what the second person 'thinks', or 'feels' about the matter, is
without relevance. (Their's not to reason why...)
The use of the imperative amounts to an explicit denial of internal process. In its purest
(and text-based) forms there is no opportunity for assimilation, which we have considered to be
the crucial element in the appearance of discourse as an adaptive strategy in biological and
cultural evolution. Assimilation depends upon the expression of an internal content. The
imperative seeks above all else to suppress this expression (or 'emotion') of feeling. Although the
precise response of the second person will depend on the larger history of the relationship--on the
nature of the assumptions the second person shares (and does not share) with the speaker--the
imperative does not raise any of this to the surface for review and clarification but assumes,
instead, that the surface structure of the moment provides all which is needed to justify the action
in question. The imperative is isolating. In violation of the social purpose of discourse, it brings
the participating elements of the 'discursive interaction' into an association which is, for each,
stripped of meaning entirely. All one can really say about such an 'interaction' is that it is
complementary and 'mutually objective', which is not saying very much.
Within the framework of a discourse which puts a serial construction on participation, the
linguistic imperative serves as a model for a 'social interaction' which denies meaningful
reciprocity and the expression of feeling. Informed by a highly elaborated set of mythic elements,
its propensity is to divide the human population into subjects and objects. In ostensibly fluid
societies (such as ours in the West) the membership of the categories is assumed to be in broad
flux, left to the strivings and imaginings of individuals. This has been a source of inspiration for
many. It provides, at the same time, a moral rationale for the fact that some of us are better
situated in life than others. One comes to realize, in the harsh light of the grammatical paradigm,
that there exist, in the human population, 'first persons' and 'second persons', with social rewards
dispensed accordingly. The imperative 'mood' provides important support for what must be
considered a central metaphor of our culture.
Avoidance of the imperative...
Actually, more surprising than the presence of the imperative in nearly all the languages on
earth is the fact, far less attended to in its functional meaning, that the users of language display
strong resistance to its alienating structures and effects. Even English, which has carried this
usage into a wider range of social situations than perhaps any language known (and has certainly
spearheaded its application in commercial advertizing), provides an astonishing assortment of
alternative constructions. In these formal avoidances of the imperative the subjunctive and the
indicative, in both its declarative and interrogative forms, each participate:
I'm sorry but I'm going to have to excuse myself for a few minutes. Is that your T-shirt on the floor in the living room? I'm getting a little hungry. Would you be able to see me at ten in my office? I would like to know what's going on if you don't mind... However, such attempts to provide the social paradigm with greater depth of mood and
dimension, if this is how 'modal mixtures' of the kind illustrated above may be interpreted, often
fail in their modest purpose and can have, in fact, the opposite effect. There is simply too much in
the language, and in the culture at large, which militates against any softening of the stark outline
of the social reality. The notion of an active subject and a passive (yet nevertheless responding)
object is so rooted in our cultural assumptions that the mechanisms we invoke, however
spontaneously, to blur this distinction often come across as artificial, or groveling, or excessively
formal, or simply sarcastic.
Avoidance and confrontation...
Despite the great emphasis our linguistically inspired culture places on the autonomy of the
individual, the English language itself appears untroubled by the concept of a world in which the
great majority of individuals function as the 'direct objects' of actions initiated by others, action
by other humans (individually or collectively) or by non-human entities or forces of some kind.
The tree struck the man on the head, killing him instantly. I had planned to meet John at the bus-stop. He sought the small boy in all corners of the neighborhood. God loves his children. He pulled her dog, nearly dead, from the cold waters of the pond. She found a new husband on a lonely road in the Upper Peninsula.
These mundane examples involve human individuals (in one case a dog) who function as
the 'direct objects' of verbs. I bring these disconnected segments of language to your attention
for a specific reason. It happens that languages exist in which surface grammar of this sort would
be quite impossible. Consider the Spanish sentences below with what may appear, at first glance,
to be their exact English equivalents:
El hombre mató la vibora. (The man killed the snake.)
In the English 'translations' of the Spanish sentences it makes little difference 'who did
what to whom'. All is surface action, made grammatically explicit, with no hint of a system of
values against which 'snakes' and 'men' can be seen as culturally differentiated entities. In the
reporting of the event, as the English grammar construes it, all is mere 'behavior' and the players
are eminently interchangeable. Though the language is explicit in its identification of the 'actor'
and the 'acted-upon' and in its characterization of the 'action' in which the two are engaged as
grammatical 'subject' and 'object', it remains remarkably circumspect on what lies beneath the
surface. The language reveals nothing about the cultural 'attitude' toward the event in question,
the killing of one living entity by another. It may seem, to initial perceptions at least, that the
English grammar has no mythic agenda.
It can be readily shown that this is a false perception. Though unstated, the message the
English language conveys is precise and unambiguous: beneath the surface phenomena of living
reality there is nothing at all, at least nothing of primary meaning to human experience. It is the
abiding power and efficiency of such a sweeping proposition that it is unmarked in its linguistic
presence and function.
Consider the Spanish 'versions' of what common sense would take to be the same events. Here much more than the mere 'behavior' of the entities reveals itself for surface inspection. To be sure, the Spanish 'hombre' may end the life of the deadly 'vibora' with the same dispatch the 'man' in the English narration killed the 'snake'. But upon switching the positions of these nominal elements in the sentence, we discover that while the poisonous 'vibora' may venture to kill the 'hombre' in question, the Spanish world-view permits it to do so only indirectly. Direct 'cause-and-effect' appears to overwhelm the Spanish sensibility. Thus, though the physical outcome may be the same, the direct relation between the killer, as grammatical subject, and the victim, as grammatical object, is effectively blocked as a cultural paradigm--this through the tiny preposition-like particle 'a' (in the phrase al hombre) which seems to specify, at most, the direction of the hostile venture. Its mytho-conceptual function is to create 'distance' between subject and object.
In other words, the second sentence is no ordinary inversion of the first. In Spanish, to
visualize the snake as 'killer' and the man as 'victim' entails a formal structure of its own. The
meaning which accompanies this special dispensation derives from an unmarked proposition
which is crucial to the shaping of the consciousness and world-view of native speakers: the human
being, whether expressed as first, second, or third person, is emphatically the subject of the
discourse, never its mere object. (One might say, for the purpose of useful comparison and
contrast, that the affirmed social reality, the unmarked condition toward which the corresponding
English constructions strive, is a uniformly objective universe.)
Speakers of Spanish go to some length to avoid situations in which human beings, or living
entities very closely associated with human beings, appear as the direct objects of the actions of
verbs:
Buscó sus libros [She sought her books], but Buscó a sus padres [She sought her parents]. Me encontré un libro enfrente de la casa [I found a book in front of the house], but Me encontré con mi amiga enfrente de la casa [I met my friend in front of the house]. Espero el bus [I am awaiting the bus], but Espero a mi amigo [I am awaiting my friend]. Tiró la pieza de madera afuera de la piscina [He pulled the piece of wood out of the pool], but Tiró a su perrita afuera de la piscina [He pulled his little dog out of the pool]. The entities which appear in English, invariably, as the direct objects of verbs -- that is, the
'parents', the 'friend', the 'little dog', in the examples of above -- appear here as the objects of
prepositions or what may be called 'distancing elements' (Spanish 'a' and 'con'). Avoided, at
what we may presume is a fundamental level of the social dynamic, is the sense of... I risk much,
perhaps, by invoking the concept 'presumption'... which seems to inhere, for the speaker of
Spanish, in the very relation of grammatical subject to grammatical object. Whether nature or
artifact, human or animal, the 'actor', in Spanish, dares not to exhibit too direct a level of control
over the entity 'acted upon'. How else is one to describe this peculiar hesitance of the Latin
sensibility? In evident contrast to the 'hands-on' engagement (and exploitation) of 'nature',
which industrialized society promotes in its deeds and nearly ubiquitous propaganda, we detect in
the Spanish language and cultural ambiance the seemingly opposite tendency: a wide-reaching and
socially integrated predisposition to hold back.
Roy's horse...
The way we think about the world is not normally considered to be reflected in the
grammar we use, certainly not in structures as ordinary as the surface relations of subject to
object, or passive to active voice. I lived for a while in rural southern Indiana and was enchanted
by the discursive power, and breadth, of the regional dialect. A neighbor, speaking of her
husband, once told me:
Roy got hisse'f kicked in the head by a horse an' ain't been right since. She often expressed impatience with this man with whom she had lived for nearly fifty years. Much of the trouble between them went back to an earlier period in their marriage, but it was certainly the 'accident' which gave meaning, and focus, to her many grievances and discontents. The 'accident', then only fifteen years in the past, was a magnet which seemed to draw to itself all the troubles of the family, past and present. Roy had been an extraordinary failure, both as husband and farmer, though she thanked God he did not drink. In considering the language she employed to describe the event in question, one must bear
in mind that there were linguistic alternatives which the speaker avoided. She could have
assembled a neutral version of the same event. She could have said, quite simply, that A horse
kicked Roy in the head--or that Roy was kicked in the head by a horse. But to use the unmarked
syntax of the language--that is, the simple passive or active forms of the verb--would have left far
too much unstated, information she considered crucial to the telling. The use of the unmarked
form of the verb would have placed her husband and the horse in an 'objective' relation. Such a
representation of the facts did not exactly fit the picture of the event she chose to carry with her in
life. More satisfying of her personal needs, and probably much more at home in her regional
idiom, was a somewhat elaborated form of the same verb: the common reflexive 'to get oneself
kicked...' This is the device--it has numerous forms and variations in standard and sub-standard
English--by which the ultimate responsibility for an action, which has affected others, is
transferred from the ostensible actor to the entity which was presumably acted upon. (Variations
range from the 'proceed to get oneself...' of the more or less standard language to the rural idiom
familiar to me since childhood: 'to go to work and get oneself...' The preference for verbs of
motion in these elaborations of mood does not necessarily imply physical movement. One can say
'You said you would wait up for me but then you went ahead and fell asleep' or, more quaintly,
'...went to work and fell asleep'.)
In any case, the effect of this dispensation of her dialect was to put the blame for the tragic incident where it belonged, on Roy. (In her original account of the event--my memory is not clear on this point--the verb may have undergone yet further elaboration. She may have said that Roy 'went' and got himself kicked by the horse. This would have added extra strength to her conviction that her husband, the principal victim of the accident, was also its cause. I never knew, nor did I ask, what happened to the horse.) This was the mean side of the issue, an intensely personal area where redress for past grievances was bitterly sought and somehow achieved, if only linguistically. |
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The right to do what to whom...
However, the matter may have had a larger and more interesting frame of reference. It was
stimulating for me to learn recently that the cultural side of this same issue has been explored in
some depth by anthropologist-linguist Gary Witherspoon, not in connection with the English
language, or English-speaking North Americans, but in relation to the speech of the Navajos with
whom he has lived and whose language and culture he has studied for many years. The entities,
'real' and 'abstract', which populate the complex universe of the Diné appear to be extensively
ranked on their capacity to act upon the external environment and to effect change, a capacity
which is partly but not entirely inherent in the 'nature' of the object or organism. The
subject/object relation so dominates Navajo thought and ritual that it was not surprising to
Witherspoon to discover that certain rules governing the elementary structure of the narrative
sentence are concerned, in first order, with this ranking.
Thus, in Navajo a 'man' can 'kick a horse' but a 'horse' can not 'kick a man'.
...in the Navajo conception of the world human beings are more intelligent than horses, and thus horses cannot will and carry out actions against [a human being] without the action being stimulated or caused by his careless, inadvertent behavior (Language and Art in the Navajo Universe [University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor; 1977], pp. 72-73). In a narrative representation of a surface event in which a 'horse' has seemed to 'kick a
boy' Navajo syntax makes explicit the fact that
...the boy is the prime mover of the action and also is the recipient of the action; the horse is only the agent or means by which the action is accomplished. The resulting semantic context [of such a sentence] is more like the English reflexive than it is like the English passive. The sentence might better be translated 'the boy had himself kicked by means of the horse (p. 73). Although my neighbor's immediate purpose was to fix blame for what had turned out, in
many respects, to be a bad life, the structure she chose to express her bitterness may have had
something of the larger cultural dimension Witherspoon noted in Navajo. Her idiom likely
brought values to the surface which were the collective property of her rural culture. Her
language probably reflected the belief that horses, though capable of powerful actions, are not
internally directed to the extent we may believe is evident in humans. In their interactions with
humans horses were thus not responsible to the same extent.
The idea must remain somewhat speculative because the speaker and, in fact, the culture
she represented no longer exist to provide either supportive evidence or evidence to the contrary.
But my uncertain memory of the speech of the region is the following: while a man could have
proceeded to 'get himself kicked by a horse', a horse could not reasonably have been said to 'get
itself kicked by a man'. I would make the further speculative suggestion that in this dialect of the
southern Indiana hill country a horse could easily have 'got itself stung by a bee', or 'got itself
struck by lightening' in open pasture, but that a tractor, or truck, with a mal-functioning
transmission would not have been able to 'get itself fixed' in time for hay season. There was
likely a chain of being, of sorts, defined by the relative capacity of the object, or entity, to control
or influence the actions of other objects and entities. In other words, exhibited in some of the
dialects of English, if not in the linguistic system regarded as 'standard', are hints of the same
ranking of elements which Gary Witherspoon sees in Navajo language and culture. But it must be
emphasized that the properties we speak of are pervasive and essentially unmarked in the universe
of the Navajos. By contrast, in an English narrative context such distinctions are produced as the
explicitly marked expression of the system, a system which is typically silent on the issue of who
may control whom or who may be ultimately 'responsible' in a physical interaction.
The sentence as defective...
It may be of interest (and surprise to some) to learn that the imperative mood has little
distinctive form and identity in Central American Spanish outside the second person singular, a
form of the verb used only rarely: and almost never outside domestic interactions involving
children. (One outstanding exception: in imitation of English and North American practice, the
second person singular is now widely used in commercial advertizing.) The presumed need for an
imperative is typically met through application of the subjunctive mood in an amazing assortment
of variations on what appears to be a simple theme. Where English gives orders, Spanish makes
modest suggestions--mild recommendations which are themselves usually clothed in hesitance,
doubt, and uncertainty, qualities of mood a rising intonation often further underscores.
The meaning conveyed through rising intonation is often unmistakable, though the
utterance as a whole may be unintelligible to those not familiar with the linguistic code. What is
the nature of this feature of meaning which has such power to cross the boundaries of culture and
language? Its root meaning is simple and straight-forward enough: rising inflection underscores
the tentativeness, or incompleteness, of the particular segment of speech. Linguistics has been
slow to investigate such structures for the reason that they require a wider focus than most
grammarians are willing to consider.
You're not going to be able to do much today. To conclude an utterance with rising intonation (indicated above through italics) is to end
on a note which explicitly probes the feelings of the second person. In the presence of such
structures the grammatical content of the utterance becomes obviously dependent upon a larger
unit than simply the 'sentence'(7). Intonation and other so-called suprasegmentals tend to direct
our attention away from the isolated sentence, which has been the linguist's working preference
by-and-large, and forces us to consider language as discursive interaction. (Certain linguistic
features, such as stress and tone, are not thought to be placed on individual elements in the linear
sequence but to be superimposed on the larger segment: they are thus 'suprasegmental'.)
To finish a declarative sentence with rising intonation is so typical of spoken Spanish that
North American movies and television for decades adopted it, along with very little else from the
complex and distinctive phonology of the language, to produce the stereotypical 'Mexican accent'
in English dialogue. Though an unpardonable simplification, perhaps, the perception was
nonetheless well-founded. Mexican Spanish especially extends the phenomenon of rising
inflection far beyond the functional boundaries of the interrogative mood, its natural home in
English and many other languages. Rising intonation is common in Spanish declarative sentences
of all kinds, even in rare occurrences of what one assumes is the 'imperative'. Native speakers of
English often employ the more conclusive falling intonation in similar situations. This may strike
a speaker of Spanish as presumptuous and overbearing. To use falling intonation in combination
with the socially disruptive grammatical imperative is to pre-empt the last word.
A surface tenuousness of expression...
I have become increasingly aware of an interesting pattern in spoken English. It is probably
not a new development, though I do not know what its origins can be, if they are not to be found
in the rules of primitive discourse we have been discussing. I have noticed, in the speech of girls
and young women especially, an exaggerated rising intonation in many declarative sentences
couched in the first person (in social contexts which normally 'require' the falling pattern). An
extreme example follows:
'I plan to attend college in the fall, probably Indiana. I've been thinking about biology, or maybe the pre-med program if my grades work out'. In the surface tenuousness of the language we detect some personal insecurity perhaps.
We naturally rush to the support of the speaker. We want to help her acquire greater confidence.
We may feel she needs to be more 'assertive'. She must develop a more positive approach to
future plans, her continuing education, her job prospects, etc. Upon reflection we may ascribe the
mode of delivery--in reality the apparatus of a complex grammatical mood--to the social inequities
of our culture and their oppressive effect on girls and young women in particular, all of which is
true and amply evident in the social environment speakers of English tend to share. (In some
cases the pertinent pattern is accompanied by distinct facial alterations: elevated eyebrows,
corners of the mouth turned tentatively upward, the beginnings of a forced smile yet not a smile.)
However, before we get too carried away, before we prescribe 'assertiveness' training for
her (or some similar program of self-reconstruction), let us look beyond our initial perceptions
and consider what the young person may have accomplished in the hypothesized instance.
Through implementation of a complex array of expressive devices, the speaker has managed to
widen (not restrict) the base of a modest discursive interaction, no small achievement for a
speaker of English. She has successfully solicited (and perhaps assimilated) our feelings, opinions,
concerns about many matters of practical interest and value to her. She has gained not only our
empathy but possibly even our participation in her planning for the future.
Thus, before asking her to adopt an alternative way of 'being in the world', and
'interacting' with others, it may be wise to examine more closely the model we would urge upon
her. Before asking young women (and young men) to abandon their sense of caution, reserve,
their sense of personal limits (as well as their intuitive understanding of the importance of
collective action), if these are indeed some of the factors, besides 'insecurity', which have come
into play in the hypothesized instance, we should ask ourselves why many of the seemingly secure
members of contemporary society--the ones we really have cause to worry about--are pushy,
overbearing, competitive, aggressive. We must wonder additionally why such socially alienating
qualities are generously rewarded by our culture.
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Autonomous structure, spontaneous evolution...
The paired examples cited on a preceding page--Buscó sus libros/Buscó a sus padres and so forth--may have conveyed, incorrectly, the impression that the use of the 'direct object' is quite ordinary, in Spanish, so long as the thing or entity acted upon is non-human or inanimate. I must add that in general practice Spanish seeks to avoid the juxtaposition of 'subject' and 'object', much preferring to view the effects of our actions, including the effects of actions on a world we presume is inanimate, as manifestations of internal process. Thus the widespread use of the verbal reflexive, a remarkable linguistic residue of animist perceptions which we detect not just in Spanish but in many of its neighbors on the European continent. We see it in French and German where its use is very widespread indeed. In its general avoidance of the third person reflexive, Standard English stands out as the exceptional case. I have my home in a part of the world where knowledge of English comes to the population
mostly through the slogans of advertizing and television. Spanish is spoken to the near exclusion
of other languages, save for a handful of Indian languages (ignored, for the most part, by the
Spanish speaking population) which struggle, at the present moment, for survival in the remote
mountains and hinterlands.
While I was editing the first draft of the present chapter (those portions having,
coincidentally, to do with the Spanish avoidance of the imperative and the subject-object relation
of the grammar), a woman appeared at my door with small jars of achiote to sell, the mysterious
product of her own household. Tiny amounts of this substance, made from the seeds of a native
plant bearing the same name, impart a subtle flavor and spectacular color to meat and vegetable
dishes. I asked her how she prepared this traditional ingredient and she gave me, instead,
practical suggestions for its culinary application. (Perhaps she did not understand me. Perhaps
the process was a secret.) Allow me, in any case, to quote certain portions of her response, first
in the original Spanish:
...se coloca la semilla de achiote con un poco de agua para que largue el color rojo... y luego se agrega algo de aceite. Note that this substance, magical in more than one sense of the word, possesses not merely
the capacity to act, but to act of its own volition. A literal translation of my neighbor's words
might be that the achiote seed (collective and feminine in gender, readers of Chapter VIII will
remember) "...places itself in a little water so that it can release its red color" (my inadequate
version of the Spanish subjunctive). Nature is a theater and we are but spectators! The mode of
conceptualization developed in this intriguing, if ordinary, example of the discursive function (and
its complex overlay of metaphoric implication) is carried still further. At a later stage in the
process we note that some olive oil has begun to "...add itself [to the mixture]", for what secret
reason my guest did not state.
The typical non-literal English translation would couch her words in the imperative: 'Put
the achiote in a little water to release its red color!' Here the substance appears as the direct
object of the verb and the second person is turned into the object of the discourse! For though
the implied subject of the English sentence is 'you', 'you' are but a silent, manipulated actor in the
sequence of events. All reason, motivation, will, and inspiration for the required action has been
transferred to the discursive center of the tiny drama now unfolding. In observance of the lighting
diagram, which is implicit in the grammar of the English language, the first person is the character
principally illuminated. It is the first person who tells us 'how it is' and 'how it must be'. In the
perspective of the English grammar, the material universe exists for the single purpose of being
acted upon.
This idea is quite alien to speakers of Spanish for whom the world presents itself as
conceptual subject, autonomously structured and spontaneously evolving. Anne Stevenson has
called our attention to lines by Mexican poet Octavio Paz in which the reality external to human
consciousness appears not in a direct relation to human creativity (as in the writings of Wallace
Stevens, Stevenson reminds us) but as an autonomously functioning organization:
Time, with no help from us, Addressing his wife, who lies beside him asleep, the poet conjures the sense of the material world
as somehow self-directed and the human observer as essentially passive:
When you open your eyes Needless to say, it is the 'English' perspective which prevails in the world of practical
affairs. It is the English perception of 'external reality' which provides the model for serious
material and economic attainment, not the Spanish. Areas where Spanish is spoken are not now,
and are not destined to be, in the vanguard of what Westerners euphemistically refer to as
'industrial progress'. Naturally the resources of these regions are eagerly expropriated while, as a
secondary benefit to the global enterprise, their impoverished populations do serve a marginally
significant purpose. They function as consumers of commodities few can afford (but which all
seem eager to purchase).
Personal division...
In primitive discourse the exchange and assimilation of feeling is normally immediate and
more or less spontaneous. For this reason a 'personal construction' of the interaction becomes,
upon reflective inquiry, far less tenable than it may seem in connection with evolved human
language where the expression of feeling is often self-conscious in its articulation and where
discourse may appear inherently divided. To be sure, primitive discourse may reveal delays and
hesitations in the varied responses of the individual. And these may be thought to provide
evidence of personal division in the community of organisms. In general, however, the
organism's feelings do not surface as deliberated, or as divisive, or even as expressive of the
organism's 'individuality'. Not at least to the extent this quality is uniquely manifest in the world
of human social interactions where the spontaneity of the exchange is often impeded, or blocked
altogether, where discourse is badly fragmented and the individual is formally isolated.
Moreover, language has contrived spacings between representations which serve to
accentuate 'personal identity'. This effect is exaggerated in written 'communications' which tend
to strip discourse of its visceral input and continuity, as suggested in our introductory chapter.
Authentic discourse, by contrast, seeks to remove personal barriers to assimilation and to fuse
participating organisms in common purpose. Authentic discourse is pre-eminently social
discourse as we learned in the same chapter. It is a mighty effort, on the part of the true
'biological self', to extend its personal reach.
It is not difficult to imagine a lively linguistic state which preceded the arrival of the
formally delineated 'person'. This is not to suggest that 'personal divisions' did not exist at this
hypothetical evolutionary moment. I do not intend to explore the treacherous waters of language
'origin' except to say that there likely existed a time, probably quite early in the evolution of
human language, in which 'person' was not yet specified linguistically, though it had, no doubt,
marked representation in numerous other locations in the discursive system. At this hypothetical
time, the 'personal pronoun', which would gird and validate the social hierarchies of the historical
period, had yet to make its appearance. We may assume that verbs were not yet differentiated on
the basis of 'person', nor is it likely that they were initially distinguished with respect to aspect,
tense, and mood.
In the imagined scenario a picture of face-to-face interactions emerges in which the
vocalization of feeling, in all its variable shades and subtleties, was still extensively dependent
upon the much humbler structures in whose company this singular property of human behavior
first evolved. Where necessary, person may have been delineated through contextual information
not normally thought to be linguistic in nature. The systems of gesture and signing, which seem
to emerge automatically among groups of people (hearing and non-hearing individuals alike) seem
to obviate the need for entire categories of spoken grammar. (That signing is a natural capability
needing little direct external guidance is attested by the achievement of the people of Martha's
Vineyard where a significant proportion of the population was subject to hereditary deafness.
Here a complex system of signing evolved which was expressive in its origin and notably free of
arbitrary symbolization.) This they do through the use of complex sets of signals which are not at
all organized along the expected lines of vocally articulated language. In these modern
demonstrations of what was certainly an ancient human competence the signer's hands play a
conspicuous role but movements of other parts of the body are significant, especially the
shoulders, face, and eyes, which seem to comprise an alternating if not continuous point of focus
in discourse across cultures. In such 'mixed systems' there appears to be little need for the
linguistic specification of individual persons, present or not. A mere glance in the general
direction of a referent who is present peripherally, perhaps only distantly visible, or a movement
of the body in the direction of the place a referent is apt to be discovered, seems to suffice.
The emergence of 'pro-forms'...
For these reasons, the moment was an event without evolutionary parallel when personal
divisions, which are explicit in the grammars of modern human languages, first surfaced to
linguistic awareness. In what unusual circumstances might such an extensive re-designing of the
machinery of human discourse have occurred?
I have tentatively assumed that 'person', in the period which preceded its linguistic
specification (and the complex grammatical elaboration this specification entailed), was marked as
a structural element of discourse, necessary only for emphasis or occasional disambiguation.
'Person' probably retained its marked status when pronouns first became available and when
elaborated verb forms appeared to reinforce these distinctions. 'Person' remained the special
case, invoked to clarify, provide emphasis, remove doubt. The unmarked time-frame was the
present, as it is still today in languages and cultures world-wide, and the mode of expression was
likely the collective. What 'you' and 'I' were doing and thinking, as separate individuals, was no
doubt important. But it remained the special case: as marked, in the collective imagination, as the
thoughts and actions of those external to the discourse of the moment. It seems at least plausible
that the elaborated validation of personal reference, within which the subject-object relation of the
modern sentence would be eventually consummated (and which we shall soon discuss), made its
first tentative appearance against the background of an earlier and much wider system of
linguistically articulated relationship, one which was more general in form, inclusive in function,
unmarked in most of its detail: the surface manifestation of enduring human experience to that
cultural juncture. Modern syntax may be an amalgam of these two ancient (eventually
competing) structures.
The 'original moment'...
The fact that the verb and pronoun systems of Indoeuropean languages appear, from the perspective of the modern investigator, as 'defective' may reflect their origin in separate chambers of the ancestral grammar. In English, for example, the full conjugation of the verb to be requires the participation of surviving inflections of three stems which comparative linguists assume were 'originally' independent. It may be of particular interest that the oldest extant Germanic form of the Indoeuropean substantive verb es- (from which is derived English is, German sind, Greek esti) possessed only the present tense--and only the subjunctive mood besides the indicative! In Germanic languages the presently 'defective' paradigm must be completed with the assistance of two stems which have separate origins: forms with stem wes- (English was, were, German war) and verbs with stem beu- (English be, been, German bin). Pronouns themselves ap |