Last time, we discussed what arguments are
for, their purposes. We saw that arguments have at least three
purposes, namely, persuasion, justification, and
explanation. We also saw that one way to explain
something is to cite its purpose. So, we can understand why Joe went to the
store by seeing that he went to the store because he wanted some milk.
So his purpose was to get milk. Similarly, we can understand arguments by
looking at their purposes, and that's what we did last time.
But this time, we're looking at a different kind of
explanation. And as we saw, one way to explain things
is to look at the material. So you want to understand why a MacBook
Air is so light, the answer is, it's made out of aluminum.
Similarly, if we want to understand arguments, we're going to gain understanding
by looking carefully at the material that they're made out of.
And we saw that arguments are sets of sentences, statements, and propositions.
So that means they're made out of language.
So, in this lecture, and the next few, we're going to look at the nature of
language in order to better understand arguments.
So, if we know that arguments are made out of language, we know that the only
creatures who can give arguments are ones that can use language.
Now some people think that other animals can use language, and there's a minimum
kind of language that other animals can use.
But other animals cannot use language that's complex enough to make argument
with. It might seem that there's some
exceptions. Here's one possibility.
But no matter what it sounds
like, this goat is not really arguing. Maybe he's fighting, maybe he's fending
off what he takes to be an enemy, but he's not arguing.
So, if other animals can use language, we can't define humans as the animal that
talks. But we can define humans as the animal
that argues, or as Aristotle said, the rational animal,
the animal that reasons, because other animals don't do that.
Humans are the only one that argues and reasons in this sense.
So, we can understand humans and arguments
better if we understand language better. Now I can't tell you everything that needs
to be said about language. You'd need to take a linguistics course
for that. And I recommend that you try one,
because it's very interesting. But here I'm only going to be able to make
four basic points about language. First of all, language is important.
Second, it's conventional. Third, it's representational.
And fourth, it's social. That should at least get us going in
understanding what arguments are made of. First, language is important.
It would be extremely difficult to live life without language.
Just try to imagine what it would be like. It's really hard to imagine.
But think about someone like Helen Keller, who was born able to see and hear, but
very shortly thereafter lost her ability to see and hear.
It was only much later in life that she gained the ability to use language,
because she never had that in her early years.
And when she gained that ability, she was amazed.
W, a, t, e, r, water. It has a name.
W, a, t.
When Helen Keller gained the ability to use language and to communicate, she
didn't become able to see or hear. She still couldn't see or hear, but she
could do amazing things. She went around the country giving
presentations. She graduated from Radcliffe College.
All of that was made available to her, simply by adding language and
communication to her life. So language is extremely useful, and that
explains why it's all around us. Just imagine walking down the streets of
the city and all the signs that you'd see. You just see words here, there and
everywhere. And now we have a mystery.
If we're not paying attention to language, then how can we use it so well to achieve
so many purposes? The answer to that lies in the second
general feature of language that I want to talk about, namely, language is
conventional. But what's a convention?
Remember that in the United States people drive on the right-hand side of the road.
That's our convention. But what does that mean?
It means that there's a general pattern of behavior that most people throughout
society obey on a regular basis, and they criticize people who deviate from that
pattern. And the same applies to language.
We have certain patterns of using words in certain ways, and when people deviate from
those patterns we criticize them. We say they're misspeaking or it's
ungrammatical. Of course, conventions can vary.
Everybody knows that there are many countries around the world where people
don't drive on the right-hand side of the road, they drive on the left-hand side of
the road. United Kingdom's one of them, but there
are lots more. And the same applies to language.
You can have the same word that's used to mean very different things in different
languages. Most notorious example is football.
In the United States it's used to refer to American Football whereas in the rest of
the world it's used to refer to what Americans call soccer.
And people in the rest of the world think that America is kind of silly because you
don't use your feet on the ball except for punting and placekicking in football.
But whether it makes sense or not the point here is simply that the conventions
can vary from one part of the world to the other.
And of course, you can do that with any word.
You could, in English, use the word, money to refer to socks. At least the English
language could've done that. It could've done that.
It didn't, but it could've. So, in this way, conventions seem to be
kind of arbitrary. They could've been very different.
But language is far from completely arbitrary, because the conventions of
language have limits, and two of these limits that I want to emphasize come from
the fact that language is also representational and social.
So first language is representational. When we use language, we're often trying
to refer to objects in the world, and describe facts in the world.
And you can't change those objects or those facts merely by changing your
language. One good story to illustrate this is about
the young Lincoln. When he was a lawyer, he supposedly
examined a witness during a trial, and he said,
Okay, how many legs does a horse have? And the witness said, Four.
And then Lincoln said, Well, if we call a tail a leg, then how many
legs does a horse have? And the witness said, Well,
then I suppose the horse would have five legs.
And Lincoln said, Absolutely not. That's wrong.
Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.
And the point of this story, whether it's true historically or not, is that language
cannot change the facts of the world. It can't make horses have five legs, if
you merely change your language. Here's another example.
Suppose that you don't have much money, But you happen to have a lot of socks in
your drawer. Well, you could say, I'm going to use the
word money to refer to socks. And now all of a sudden I've got lots of
money. I'm not poor anymore.
It ain't going to work, and that's because language, again, can't
change your financial situation because that's a fact about the world,
not about how you're using the word socks or the word money.
And the other limit on the conventions of language comes from the fact that language
is social. Sure, sometimes we talk to ourselves and
use language to write things down, write notes to ourselves, for example, without
other people around but basically language evolved because of its social function.
What that means is that there's a point in following the conventions of the language
as shared by the rest of that society that speaks that language.
I've always thought that it was kind of silly that grapefruits are called
grapefruits. Sure, they're fruits, but they don't look
like grapes at all. They look more like lemons.
They're like really big lemons, and that's why I think they ought to be called
mega lemons. But If I went to a restaurant, and I
wanted to order grapefruit juice, so I turned to the service person and
said, I'd like some mega lemon juice, I probably wouldn't get what I wanted.
And so even if I think the language is not using the right conventions, there's a
point in following the conventions of the language in order to be able to
communicate with other people and get what I want.
And again, the great philosophers Monty Python saw this very well, when they
produced their little clip called, The Man Who Speaks Only In Anagrams.
Our first guest into the studio tonight is a man who talks entirely in anagrams.
Patsee Greot. Do you enjoy this?
I dom certainlyodd revychumso. What's your name?
Hamrack, Hamrack Yeterot. So the point is obvious.
Language is shared and once it's shared then it make sense to actually follow the
conventions of society even if you don't like them.
Overall then, language is important, and it's conventional in ways that might seem
arbitrary, but actually, is limited in important ways
by the fact that language is also representational and social.
But it's kind of cheap to say language is conventional.
Which are the conventions? Which are the rules that language follows?
And this is actually extremely complex, because language follows rules or
conventions at many different levels. Just take a real simple example.
You walk into a pizza shop and you say, Gimme pepperoni.
Well, the person then fixes a pepperoni pizza.
And you pay for it. But how did that work?
That you said, Gimme pepperoni. Well, first of all notice, that you had to
use words that were meaningful to the person you were speaking to.
Gimme wasn't a word in English, a long time ago,
but this person understands gimme as a word, and therefore they can understand
it. But in addition to those semantic
constraints, you also have to have physical production constraints.
You have to say it loud enough. If the pizza shop is really noisy, then
you have to speak pretty loudly to get the person behind the counter, to understand
what you're saying. You also have to put the words in the
right order. If, instead of saying, gimme a pepperoni
pizza, you said, Pizza a gimme pepperoni,
they might not understand at all what you're saying.
So there are structural combination rules that you have to follow as well.
And there are also etiquette rules. In some pizza places if you just said,
Gimme pepperoni, the waiter might say, Well, forget it, sir.
I don't serve such impolite people.
I certainly would say that to my son if my son said, Gimme pepperoni.
I wouldn't get him a piece. I'd say, you need to ask me properly.
So rules of etiquette can also get in the way of communication and cooperation.
So language operates at all of these levels.
Physical production, semantics, or the meanings of words, syntax, or the rules of
grammar, and etiquette. Now all of this might seem obvious to you.
And it probably should be obvious to you. But the rules of language are not always
obvious. And that's what we're going to be learning
throughout this course. I'll start with a simple example.
What's this? Well, that is a finger.
Okay. But what's this?
Aaaah. That is a singer.
This is not a finger. That's not a singer.
Why do we pronounce the word finger with a hard G and the word singer with a soft G?
That's a rule that we all follow, but very few people know the rule behind that
pronunciation. So, do you know the rule?
Take a little while and think about it. .
Have you got it yet? Okay, I'll tell you the answer.
When a word ends in N, G, E, R, and it's derived from a verb that ends in NG, then
you get a soft G, like singer. But when the word that ends in N, G, E, R,
is not derived from a verb that ends in NG, then you get either a hard G, like
finger, Or a kind of medium G like plunger or
danger. Now when you get that medium G or that
hard G that's a trickier question. And I don't know the answer to that one,
which shows that we can all use language according to rules, without knowing what
the rules are. We don't have to be conscious of the rules
at all. And a lot of what we're going to be doing
in this course is looking behind our language to try to figure out the rules
that govern the way we use language, especially when we're making arguments in
order to better understand what we're doing.
Some of the answers we give will be obvious once you mention them.
But, I bet you hadn't thought of him before.