Replying to LO25505 --
[Host's Note: More gremlins! For some unknown reason, this msg from Leo of
10/25 was not distributed. My apologies! ..Rick]
Dear LO'ers, dear Joy Vatsyayann
I am glad that the dialogue in this issue continues and the mail of Joy
gave me the opportunity to reflect somewhat further.
> Let me pick out the points from your write up that i would like to address
> and then do so in a pointwise manner. How does that 'sound'? :)
That 'sounds' marvelous, it triggered some resonations :-)
> 1."We could see language as the most important carrier of thoughts and
> knowledge from one person to another. "
>
> Language is the most exentisively used carrier of thoughts and knowledge i
> agree. About how that makes it the most important I find debatable. After
> all, sometimes a hug can mean more than any number of words spoken in any
> tongue, tone or level of tuning!
>
> Thus it would be more correct perhaps to say - some of us place language
> above all else in terms of importance in the way we communicate. This
> partly justifies how we make fun of differing accents, or pick on people
> who make mistakes in spellings or usage etc.
You are right, I should have used the word 'extensive' instead of 'most
important'. I am fully aware of the importance of other means of
communications. One is even free to include telepathy. In fact some former
contributions on this issue directed to these aspects of communication.
Just for a reminder, this dialogue was initiated in response to a remark
At de Lange made. He pointed to the great barriers that exist if the
education is executed in a language different from the mothertongue of the
learner. So for the main stream of this dialogue we could concentrate on
language sensu stricto.
> 2.".....if the sending and receiving persons are on the same 'wavelength'.
> Language should have the same value for both of them. Only then, the flow
> meets less resistance, without barriers....."
>
> How many wars could have been avoided if this were true - even amongst
> that spoke the same language on the same wavelength and valued it equally!
> How many wives could have been saved from a battering husband if what you
> state above is true to all situations. Once again, the statement you have
> made holds true only in a given situation at a particular time and place
> only.
I think my quoted sentence holds. It does not mean that the words spoken
or written could not contain meaning that insult the receiver in such a
way that even wars could start. The translated Dutch expression: "the tip
of the pen is the severest weapon I know" tells this too. And quarrels
between persons are so often the result of misinterpretations of
eachother's words - the content.
These misinterpretations could happen during all stages of communication
as you have so clealy mentioned:
> It is a deeper interplay of things than just this. I shall conclude with
> what I think this is.
> The 'content' here consists of:
> 1. what person A was thinking when they communicated what they did.
> 2. what mood were they in and what had they been through in the day when
> they said this.
> 3. who did they say it to and what is their relationship with B
> 4. what predispositions does A have. i.e. before even communicating what
> mind sets does A have towards B + what mind sets does he have about the
> place and time they are being said at + what mind set does A have towards
> the relationship with B
> 5. when A has thought of what to say in language to B - one has to consider
> what A thinks of B, what A percieves of all Bs in their lives, what is A
> feeling towards B at the time the communication is delivered.
> 6. all the above but reversed for B - the listener.
>
> You get the drift. And all this is processed in A and B's minds in split
> seconds without knowing. And all that is communicated might be a HELLO or
> just a shrug of shoulders or nasty eye roll.
Apart from the gestures you mentioned, your exposee points clearly to the
close relationship of language and thinking - split seconds.
In your contribution you continue to focus on language as a mean of
communication. I agree with you that these thoughts immediately pop up
when talking on language. However, I initiated this dialogue with another
direction in mind, viz. the relationships and interplay between language
and thinking/learning. Thus, the communication WITHIN a person's head, if
one may call this process communication. I hope you don't mind if I return
to this point, leaving some remarks of you unanswered.
Before going on, it is maybe wise to stress that I really don't know if
language plays THE most important role in the way we think. There are so
much other things to think of which influence our thinking. And language
certainly is also a result of our thinking. But for sure, language is not
one-to one linked with thoughts. The complete environment with all its
apects is in various ways related to our thinking AND related to our
language. That makes this matter so complex. And maybe, I made a serious
mistake to extract only language and mind from this whole.
But both, language and mind are systems/organisations. So taking them
apart and looking at them gives hopefully at least some clues to all these
relationships with the surroundings.
Let me say my thoughts in other words.
We could see language sensu lato (thus including all your mentioned other
means of communication) as information (NOT knowledge!). Language s.s. is
just one way of packing information. In communication, a package of
information is presented by person A to person B. This package has a form
and has contents, both interplaying with eachother. This interplay however
will be different if the package was presented to person C. Because this
interplay happens in the mind of the receiver. And let me make clear that
the content of language is much more than the meaning of the individual
words. The interplay within the mind of the receiver is also different
from the interplay in the mind of person A. However, the intention of A
was that the various interplays of various receivers will not differ too
much of his own.
My first two original questions pointed to the aspects of form and of the
content of a package of language s.s.-information. Because in each of
both, or in both could already exists a kind of barrier. The most serious
barrier is probably the one that occurs during the interplay and the
transformation of the information package into a knowledge package in the
receiver's mind.
There are two kinds of barriers. The first is the one ofwhich a person is
aware of; the other is when a person is unaware of a barrier. I think that
Joy mentioned only the permanent and continues struggle against the
barriers of the first category. I agree completely with you.
But there is something that I think also At de Lange had in mind: the
barriers that are influenced and possibly created by language in one's
mind, where information is metamorphosed into knowledge. And even more
serious is when such barrier even prevents this change into knowledge.
> POINT 3 - " Language has a spoken and a written side. Some languages are
> more 'musical' than others, in some languages (Chinese) the pitch is even
> important for the meaning of the word. But does the type of characters of
> the written language plays a role too? Is that why Japanese and Chinese
> think different from the 'western' world. Has the Arabic world something
> different in their thinking because of their special smooth, fluent and
> unhooky writings and reading from right to left?"
>
> Firstly, i think i have stated that language is beyond words - spoken or
> written. it includes signs, jestures, sounds, beats, rhythms, waves and
> much more. Language the way you describe it is nothing but that hammer
> built by a person once and is used with the same design over years.
> nothing special about the way it looks. it just is the best way the
> inventor thought it would be. someones thoughts in the form of a tool.
> where the tool is made may change the quality of it but not because it was
> named in german or hindi or english! but because of the materials it was
> made up of.
>
> Often the main error made about communication is when it is treated as a
> dead object - like a hammer - in conjunction with what we are.
> Communication is a part of human cognitive processes and thus is more
> intricate than a simple hammer!
Joy, you have used this hammer again and again (hammering), but I NEVER
had that in mind when I talk about language. I hope that what I have
written above makes that clear.
So Beethoven playing the hammers of the piano, touching different strings
than the hammer on your thumbnail is ofcourse acceptional among all the
German speaking persons of his age. However is it not remarkable that not
only Beethoven, but a whole trail of componists come from German speaking
countries? Is it not amasing that the most famous mathematicians (e.g.
Fermat, Descartes, Poincare) come from the French speaking world; most of
the famous phycisits (Einstein, Planck, Kepler, Oppenheim) came from the
German world; is it not strange that so much famous painters came from
such small country as the Dutch lowlands (including Netherlands and
Flanders)?? That is what plays in my mind.
Joy, I think I have repeated lots of your thoughts and hopefully some
misinterpretations have been whiped out. Best wishes,
dr. Leo D. Minnigh
l.d.minnigh@library.tudelft.nl
Library Technical University Delft
PO BOX 98, 2600 MG Delft, The Netherlands
Tel.: 31 15 2782226
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Let your thoughts meander towards a sea of ideas.
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--Leo Minnigh <l.d.minnigh@library.tudelft.nl>
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