Folk Linguistics, Epistemology, and Language Theories

International Association for the Integrational Study of Language and Communication

Recent publications

(complete list at end)

2022

John Orman. Indeterminacy and Explanation in Linguistic Inquiry: Contentious Papers 2012 – 2018.

Adrian Pablé, Cristine Severo, Sinfree Makoni, Peter Jones (orgs.) Integrationism and Language Ideologies. (Published in association with Fórum Linguíst!co, Florianópolis, Brasil)

2023

Talbot J. Taylor. Linguistic Analysis and Normativity. Collected Papers, vol. 1.

Talbot J. Taylor. Folk Linguistics, Epistemology, and Language Theories. Collected Papers, vol. 2.

Talbot J. Taylor. Children Talking About Talking: The Reflexive Emergence of Language. Collected Papers, vol. 3.

Talbot J. Taylor. On the History of Linguistics: Essays of Appreciation and Criticism. Collected Papers, vol. 4.

Talbot J. Taylor. Language Origins and Ape Linguistic Research. Collected Papers, vol. 5.

The International Association for the Integrational Study of Language and Communication

The IAISLC was founded in 1998. It is managed by an international Executive Committee, whose members are:

Adrian Pablé (SUPSI), Secretary

David Bade

Charlotte Conrad (Dubai)

Stephen J. Cowley (University of Southern Denmark)

Daniel R. Davis (University of Michigan)

Dorthe Duncker (University of Copenhagen)

Jesper Hermann (University of Copenhagen)

Christopher Hutton (University of Hong Kong)

Peter Jones (Sheffield Hallam University)

Nigel Love (University of Cape Town)

Sinfree Makoni (Penn State University)

Rukmini Bhaya Nair (Indian Institute of Technology)

Talbot J. Taylor (William & Mary)

Michael Toolan (University of Birmingham)

IAISLC – In the beginning… (from left): T.J. Taylor, H. Davis, M. Toolan, R. Harris, N. Love, C. Hutton, D. Davis and G. Wolf

This collection ©2023

ISBN: 979-8-9887878-6-0 (e-book)

Acknowledgements

Language constructing language: the implications of reflexivity for linguistic theory. Originally published in Language Sciences, vol. 22, no. 4, pps. 483-499, 2000.

Language in its own image: on epilinguistic and metalinguistic knowledge Originally published in Penser l’histoire des savoirs linguistiques, (S. Archaimbault, ed.), Editions de l’Ecole Nationale Supérieure, 2014.

"Folk-linguistic fictions and the explananda of the language sciences". Originally published in New Ideas in Psychology, vol. 42, pp. 7-13, 2016.

Why we need a theory of language Originally published in Linguistics and Philosophy: The Controversial Interface (Harré and Harris, eds.), Oxford: Pergamon, pps.233-48, 1993.

Folk psychology and the Language Myth. Originally published in The Language Myth in Western Culture (R. Harris, ed.) London: Curzon Press, 2002.

Talking about what happened. Originally published in Language and History (N. Love, ed.). London: Routledge. 2006.

Metalinguistic truisms and the emancipation of the language sciences. Originally published in Language Sciences, vol. 61, pp. 104-112, 2017.

Photograph facing the title page: Rita Harris.

Contents

I. Language constructing language: the implications of reflexivity for linguistic theory

II. Language in its own image: on epilinguistic and metalinguistic knowledge

III. Folk-linguistic fictions and the explananda of the language sciences

IV. Why we need a theory of language

V. Folk psychology and the Language Myth

VI. Talking about what happened

VII. Metalinguistic truisms and the emancipation of the language sciences

I

Language constructing language: the implications of reflexivity for linguistic theory

¹

Abstract

The reflexive (metalinguistic) properties of language are typically represented as supplemental and inessential. Language, so the story goes, could get along perfectly well without them. The characteristics of language are independent of reflexive discourse — independent of how in metadiscourse we talk about language and its characteristics. This paper challenges this web of received opinion by asking: What might ‘first-order’ language be like if there were no way to talk, write, or sign about it — that is, if there were no ‘second-order’ meta-language? By considering the consequences for writing, translation, pragmatics, semantics, and language acquisition and evolution, the conclusion arrived at is that without ‘second-order’, reflexive properties, ‘first-order’ language itself could not exist.

What if there were no reflexive language? If no language had any reflexive properties? Or to put it another way: What if we did not have and had never developed any metalinguistic vocabulary or metadiscursive techniques for talking about our language and its everyday uses – the language that is some-times called, our ‘primary’ or ‘object’ language? What would be the consequences?

This paper is intended as a thought-experiment. Its goal is not one of proving any claim or set of claims, nor even of providing an argument. As a thought-experiment, most of the paper consists in posing counterfactual questions and then speculating about possible answers to those questions. Few if any of the answers proposed could be shown to be true, or even given any empirical evidence. But that is not the point of posing the questions or proposing speculative answers to them. Instead, my aim is to suggest a different way of looking at something that is quite familiar and that we think we already know perfectly well – language. I am fully aware that the picture of language that this method allows me to draw will strike most readers as counter-intuitive, implausible, and perhaps even absurd. Nevetheless, my hope is that the experience of trying to make sense of language in this way can help us break free of the rhetorical compulsion to see our familiar account of the properties of language as necessary, as the only account that could make sense of all that we ‘know’ about language. (For a discussion of this rhetorical method and of the motivation for using it, see Taylor, 1992, chap. 1 & 11). If the result is that the proposed shift of aspect in how we see language strikes many readers as disorienting and strange, so much the better.

Another approach would have been to lay out an argument for the importance of reflexive discourse: its importance to the learning of language, to the evolution of language and its everyday uses, to the sociopolitical issues which it raises, and to its description, analysis, and theorization. I have been presenting this argument, bit by bit, point by point, in various papers and books published over the past 20 years (see especially Taylor 1981, 1986, 1990a,b, 1992, 1993, 1997; Shanker and Taylor, 2001). But while my goal here is both more speculative and suggestive, at the same time its focus is much more generalized.

So I begin by asking the reader to imagine the consequences if we users of a language (and in most cases I will be taking English for purposes of illustration) did not have at our disposal any everyday reflexive vocabulary, such as the ordinary English words

How would our experience and use of language be affected if, mysteriously, these words and our capacity to invent them somehow disappeared? I will speculate about some possible consequences below. And yet this thought-experiment should not be limited to imagining a world without metalinguistic vocabulary. For such vocabulary is only the small tip of the reflexive-linguistic iceberg. As with all language, what matters much more than the vocabulary itself, of course, is how we use it. The importance and function of reflexive language will never become clear if we think only in terms of the vocabulary items which are employed in reflexive discourse. Analogously, we could learn little about the role and influence of ethical discourse in a given society simply by studying the vocabulary used in that discourse – no more than we would learn about the game of soccer if we merely examined the ball, the goal posts, the shoes, and clothes used in the game.

Therefore, to take another step closer to where the real ‘action’ is in linguistic reflexivity, the reader might reflect on the consequences if there were no metadiscursive forms of expression – by which I mean the somewhat routinized phrases for talking about language and our uses of it. The following commonplace expressions are some typical English examples.

That's what she said.

Yes, that's right.

What did he mean by that, anyway?

Why did he say that?

I’m talking about the one on the left.

Will you explain that?

Sorry, could you say that again?

What's that called?

Did she understand what you said?

Is this what you're referring to?

What does comely mean?

I'll try to describe it to you.

That's not true!

I don't agree with her.

What's his name?

I insist on doing it this way.

Please don't lie to me.

I believe you.

Promise me you won’t go.

Really?

He said he was sorry.

I'm glad to hear it.

She ordered me to leave.

Would you ask him to shut up?

To take yet one more step closer to the real ‘action’, we might ask what the consequences would be if we language-users were not just lacking in reflexive vocabulary and forms of expression, but had no metadiscursive means at all for talking reflexively? In other words, if we had no conversational techniques or language games whatsoever for talking about, referring to, commenting on, expressing our disagreement with, criticizing, proposing an interpretation of, questioning, explaining, asking for clarification of, (etc.). . . something that we or someone else had said or written or signed? What if we couldn't ask Who said so? or Why do you say that? or Don’t you agree? or How do you know that?

Another way of raising these general kinds of questions is to ask what the consequences might be if we did not have:

The concept of ‘what (someone) said’

The concept of ‘what (someone) meant’

The concept of ‘what (someone) is/was talking about’

The concept of ‘saying (something) again’

The concept of ‘understanding (or not-understanding) what (someone) said’

The concept of ‘what a particular word/utterance means’

The concept of an utterance ‘being true’ (or ‘being false’)

The concept of ‘why (someone) says (something)’

The concept of ‘explaining (something)’

The concept of ‘what (something) is called’

The concept of ‘reference’

The concept of ‘description’

The concept of ‘agreeing’

The concept of a ‘name’

The concept of ‘lying’

etc., etc.

Many if not all of these concepts would appear to be essential not only to the practical use of language and to making sense of its use by others, but also to the day-to-day management of our cultural lives.

However, before beginning to explore in more detail what might be entailed by the loss of the reflexive remarks by which these concepts are said to be expressed, it is important to note that this topic and these questions are hardly ever raised by theorists of language. The typical assumption appears to be that reflexive discourse is a superficial supplement to language itself, one which could be removed without seriously affecting language. A few theorists might concede that this imagined absence of all reflexive forms of language would make a significant difference to particular cultural uses of language, all the while insisting that language itself does not require reflexive features. In other words, the standard view is that, even if we were bizarrely lacking in all of these metalinguistic words, forms of expression, and language games, we would still have the concepts which they express — or at least the concepts which are most crucial to the existence and functioning of language. Naturally, there would be some disagreement about what those crucial concepts are, but it is a good bet that some version of each of the following would be included in most accounts: the concepts of ‘meaning’, of a ‘word’, of ‘being true’, of ‘understanding’, of ‘talking about’ (or ‘referring’ to) something, of ‘what (something) is called’, of ‘saying (something) again’, and so on. And therefore these language theorists would argue that even if, for instance, we had no such expression as The word W means X or no discursive means at all of asking what something means, we could still grasp the relationship/fact expressed by that metalinguistic phrase: that is, we would still have the concept of ‘meaning’. After all, these theorists might say, if we did not have the concept of ‘meaning’, how could we possibly understand that a given word means just what it does: e.g., that comely means ‘pleasant to look at’? The concept of ‘meaning’ is too crucial to language, its use, and its understanding—even at the very earliest developmental stages—to depend on its expression in reflexive exchanges.

If pressed to support this assumption, many language theorists will point out that, the world over, infants learn their and other people's names, the meanings of many words, what countless things are called, that some utterances are true and others false, etc., long before they show any mastery of metalinguistic vocabulary. How could children do this unless they had already come to grasp some version of these crucial metalinguistic concepts – unless the linguistic identity of language were somehow already immanent in the phenomena themselves? For instance, John Searle adopts a version of this position in his book The Construction of Social Reality (Searle,1995; cf. discussion in Love 1999). Language, he says, is self-identifying. He argues that institutional facts such as money, property, marriage, etc., require language — indeed are constituted by language. However, he claims that language is the exception to this. For, although also institutional, linguistic facts — such as the fact that comely is a word of English or that it means ‘pleasant to look at’ — do not require language. Language does not require (meta)language in the same way that other institutional facts do. Instead, language is

precisely designed to be a self-identifying category of institutional facts. The child is brought