[Inquiry] Re: Sign Relations -- Discussion

[Jon Awbrey]

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SR.  Discussion Note 3

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BB = Bill Bailey

Re: SR-COM 13.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-January/002260.html
In: SR-COM.     http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-January/thread.html#2242

BB: Perhaps the kicker is this -- when you really begin to look at
    how people actually use language, you'll find that they don't.

If you find another paraphrase more useful, feel free to use it instead.
I think most people know what I mean when I say I use "I" to refer to me.
At any rate, I don't think that my use of the word "use" affects the very
schematic sorts of examples that I chose to begin with here, more or less
extracted from ordinary langauge use, but intended more to illustrate some
of the more generic and salient properties of sign relations in a not quite
trivial couple of examples.

BB: Earlier, someone  posted a William James witticism that its "turtles all
    the way down".  An anthropologist professor of mine frequently said, in
    essence, "It's artifacts all the way down".  In communication it is not
    very useful to speak of using language, unless we define language as
    something other than the relationships of words.  People communicate
    to get work done.  They are often not very good at the work because
    they typically learned their communication behavior from their parents,
    who, like their own parents, didn't know how to do the work either.
    We assimilate what ever communication behavior is available in our
    families.  The traditional conception is that we are acquiring language.
    But we are not.  We are learning how to act when your wife criticizes
    your drinking, or your husband criticizes your spending -- yes, I know
    those are cliches, but many of the families I encountered were living
    them.  Starting with that principle, within a few minutes of working
    with chronically conflicted couples, you can tell them a great deal
    about the nature of their respective parents.  They learn communication
    behavior just like they learn how to fix a plugged sink or shingle a roof --
    by participation.

Of course you know it's a very good question whether we "learn" language at all,
or merely undergo the natural maturation process of an innate linguistic organ,
but it's hardly within my scope to tackle such a bedeviled hen or egg questions
at this stage of the game.

BB: When you say "and so it is only with a whole lot of luck and work that 
    we ever begin to extract common senses out of the massa confusa of all 
    this initial idiosyncracy", perhaps the idiosyncrasy is in the approach?
    I'm not sure what you mean by "initial idiosyncrasy", but, if you mean in
    the sampled behavior, I'm pretty certain that much of the communication
    behavior that seems idiosyncratic from the outside is solid convention
    within the given culture of the communicators.  In fact, I'm willing to
    bet you that any actual communication behavior you want to present from
    a reasonably normal population of people can be shown to have a base in
    cultural convention.  If so, how can it be described as idiosyncratic?

I was referring to the curious property of indexicals, that they
are to designed to denote different objects when used by different
people or when used at different times.  I chose this example with
a larger purpose in mind, as it reflects certain issues that arise
whenever observers in different "reference frames" have to reconcile
the frame relative observations that they make with regard to what we
generally assume is actually the same very world.

BB: If you are going to make sense of situated communication, I think you
    have to look at the presumed "work to be done", and, yes, that often
    seems stupid and it often ends up in stupid, confused outcomes.
    Communication transactions are often sad, ugly failures because
    one person wants to use a given artifact (metaphorically) as
    a paperweight while the other wishes to use it as a weapon.

That was kinda my point.

BB: Or put it differently, if you you want to use my handling of money as a 
    sign of my stinginess, and I want to use it as a sign of my thriftiness, 
    one of us in our universe of two is functionally insane, and neither of 
    us has  information that functions in the relationship.  But neither of 
    use is exactly "idiosyncratic" in our communication behavior.

BB: I view my comments as seconding your first two paragraph below,
    and most of the third.  It is that last clause I object to,
    and suggest the madness is in the method, not the data.

Well, I hope I explained what I meant a little better.

Jon Awbrey

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