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The Crucible of Language
From the barbed, childish taunt on the school playground, to the eloquent sophistry of a lawyer prising open a legal loophole in a court of law, meaning arises each time we use language to communicate with one another. How we use language - to convey ideas, make requests, ask a favour, and express anger, love or dismay - is of the utmost importance; indeed, linguistic meaning can be a matter of life and death. In The Crucible of Language, Vyvyan Evans explains what we know, and what we do, when we communicate using language; he shows how linguistic meaning arises, where it comes from, and the way language enables us to convey the meanings that can move us to tears, bore us to death, or make us dizzy with delight. Meaning is, he argues, one of the final frontiers in the mapping of the human mind.
378 pages, Paperback
First published November 30, 2015
About the author
Vyvyan Evans
21 books68 followersVyvyan Evans is a native of Chester, England. He holds a PhD in linguistics from Georgetown University, Washington, D.C., and is a Professor of Linguistics. He has published numerous acclaimed popular science and technical books on language and linguistics. His popular science essays and articles have appeared in numerous venues including 'The Guardian', 'Psychology Today', 'New York Post', 'New Scientist', 'Newsweek' and 'The New Republic'. His award-winning writing focuses, in one way or another, on the nature of language and mind, the impact of technology on language, and the future of communication. His science fiction work explores the status of language and digital communication technology as potential weapons of mass destruction. For further biographical details visit his official website: www.vyvevans.net. For details of his science fiction writing, visit the Songs of the Sage book series website: www.songs-of-the-sage.com.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
February 1, 2019
It's five months since I read this, I've been going over this in my mind, and have decided to upgrade it from three stars to four. I had thought of five stars, but looking over my notes, I am reminded of my frustrations, so compromise at four. I really enjoyed The Language Myth because it was a direct assault on Universal Grammar, which I think I am as close to despising as any theory I've encountered. I think UG is a massive wrong turn, which has wasted years - I suppose by now, lifetimes of linguistic research. In The Crucible of Language: How Language and Mind Create Meaning tries instead to offer a counter theory to UG. My frustration was that I thought he had failed to raise theoretical monolith in the place of UG. It took me some time to realise that that in itself was a good thing, because UG is monolithic, but language is not.
Evans title doesn't well suit his work. As a teacher of American Civilisation, I am expected to encourage by class to debate whether American society is a melting pot (a crucible) or a salad bowl of ethnicities. The take on language Evans offers us is more of a salad bowl than a melting pot. There's philosophy of language, some cognitive psychology, some biology, and some paleontology. He doesn't do a particularly good job of fusing all these all together, but on reflection, I don't think he needs to, a theory of language as salad seems more plausible to me than as a product of the crucible. In fact the idea that language is the unique result of one refinement of our biology, one genetic mutation exclusive to our own genetic lineage - the UG hypothesis - so obviously goes against common experience - that it amazing that it has any traction at all. We know that we can communicate with other species, and we know that other species communicate with each other. We also know that feral children - genetically undamaged humans that have developed outside of human society fail to develop language in the fully human sense.
Evans writes "Language works extremely well because it is part of a larger meaning-making complex", but I would argue that language itself is a complex. A system rather a component in a system: obviously brains are required, and larynxes, and lungs, and ears - other species have these, and other organs that enable them to communicate. But also fingers and eyes, because these made it possible to write and to read, a change in modality which radically changed the nature of language. Perhaps this is not so obvious with our alphabetic writing, but that was a late comer, hieroglyphs and ideograms preceded it: the cultural evolution of language was not a straightforward development from its biological evolution. This is not a point Evans makes. perhaps because like Chomsky he is a monoglot linguist.
Disappointment set in fast when Evans spent the early chapters discussing Metaphors We Live By. This book is fine as far as it goes, but suffers from a lack of familiarity with languages other than English. The basic argument is that our experience of the physical orientation in space and time and the functionality of our bodies gives raise to series of metaphors which drive the development of language. For example "It's not up you to you" means you're not the one to decide indicates that responsibility is metaphorically 'bottom up'. However, in Hungarian the equivalent idiom is "Nem tőled függ", literally "It doesn't hang from you". The metaphor here seems to be that responsibility is top down. Another example of the lack of congruence between these basic metaphors in different languages is "Step on it", which in English means go faster, the equivalent idiom in Hungarian is "Huzz bele", literally "pull yourself into it". I can't even begin to how this metaphor came about, but these examples, which popped up randomly, indicate that are strong cultural factors in the use of metaphor, as well as physical and biological. Without the universality of these metaphors, their discovery is interesting, but not philosophically important.
I think Lakoff and Johnson's book fails to be interesting because they are philosophers but naive linguists, Evan's book fails because he is a linguist but a naive philosopher. The intuition that an account of meaning is central to any account of language is correct. Chomsky's idea that syntax language can partitioned from lexis, and that lexis and hence meaning can be effectively ignored is the fatal error in his account of language. But Evans wants to base his account in the nexus of bodies, concepts and words. In doing so he jumps across the mind-body problem, without recognising how complex that problem is, and how much work philosophers since Plato have already done on it, relying instead on []. His assumption is "The primary metaphor arises, therefore, because what fires together, in neuronal terms, wires together." The jump from metaphors to neurons is huge, like trying a jump a wide river at night. The banks can be seen, dimly, but the water is dark, deep and flowing fast. Evans thinks concepts are like stepping stones across the river. Concepts join neurons to words. He admits (pg 46) that our present technology does not allow us to see a concept in an arrangement of neurons, and thinks language is better way to see concepts, But doesn't seem to recognise that philosophers have spent two millenia picking out concepts in arrangements of words, generating more heat than light.
...to be continued
Evans title doesn't well suit his work. As a teacher of American Civilisation, I am expected to encourage by class to debate whether American society is a melting pot (a crucible) or a salad bowl of ethnicities. The take on language Evans offers us is more of a salad bowl than a melting pot. There's philosophy of language, some cognitive psychology, some biology, and some paleontology. He doesn't do a particularly good job of fusing all these all together, but on reflection, I don't think he needs to, a theory of language as salad seems more plausible to me than as a product of the crucible. In fact the idea that language is the unique result of one refinement of our biology, one genetic mutation exclusive to our own genetic lineage - the UG hypothesis - so obviously goes against common experience - that it amazing that it has any traction at all. We know that we can communicate with other species, and we know that other species communicate with each other. We also know that feral children - genetically undamaged humans that have developed outside of human society fail to develop language in the fully human sense.
Evans writes "Language works extremely well because it is part of a larger meaning-making complex", but I would argue that language itself is a complex. A system rather a component in a system: obviously brains are required, and larynxes, and lungs, and ears - other species have these, and other organs that enable them to communicate. But also fingers and eyes, because these made it possible to write and to read, a change in modality which radically changed the nature of language. Perhaps this is not so obvious with our alphabetic writing, but that was a late comer, hieroglyphs and ideograms preceded it: the cultural evolution of language was not a straightforward development from its biological evolution. This is not a point Evans makes. perhaps because like Chomsky he is a monoglot linguist.
Disappointment set in fast when Evans spent the early chapters discussing Metaphors We Live By. This book is fine as far as it goes, but suffers from a lack of familiarity with languages other than English. The basic argument is that our experience of the physical orientation in space and time and the functionality of our bodies gives raise to series of metaphors which drive the development of language. For example "It's not up you to you" means you're not the one to decide indicates that responsibility is metaphorically 'bottom up'. However, in Hungarian the equivalent idiom is "Nem tőled függ", literally "It doesn't hang from you". The metaphor here seems to be that responsibility is top down. Another example of the lack of congruence between these basic metaphors in different languages is "Step on it", which in English means go faster, the equivalent idiom in Hungarian is "Huzz bele", literally "pull yourself into it". I can't even begin to how this metaphor came about, but these examples, which popped up randomly, indicate that are strong cultural factors in the use of metaphor, as well as physical and biological. Without the universality of these metaphors, their discovery is interesting, but not philosophically important.
I think Lakoff and Johnson's book fails to be interesting because they are philosophers but naive linguists, Evan's book fails because he is a linguist but a naive philosopher. The intuition that an account of meaning is central to any account of language is correct. Chomsky's idea that syntax language can partitioned from lexis, and that lexis and hence meaning can be effectively ignored is the fatal error in his account of language. But Evans wants to base his account in the nexus of bodies, concepts and words. In doing so he jumps across the mind-body problem, without recognising how complex that problem is, and how much work philosophers since Plato have already done on it, relying instead on []. His assumption is "The primary metaphor arises, therefore, because what fires together, in neuronal terms, wires together." The jump from metaphors to neurons is huge, like trying a jump a wide river at night. The banks can be seen, dimly, but the water is dark, deep and flowing fast. Evans thinks concepts are like stepping stones across the river. Concepts join neurons to words. He admits (pg 46) that our present technology does not allow us to see a concept in an arrangement of neurons, and thinks language is better way to see concepts, But doesn't seem to recognise that philosophers have spent two millenia picking out concepts in arrangements of words, generating more heat than light.
...to be continued
February 19, 2022
Very well-written. Unfortunately, nothing more.
This book is many things but it's not what it promises. It's an overview of many cognitive disciplines, which is good in itself, but there is too little language in this book about language.
I still don't know what "parametric knowledge" is and why it has been introduced in the book.
This book is many things but it's not what it promises. It's an overview of many cognitive disciplines, which is good in itself, but there is too little language in this book about language.
I still don't know what "parametric knowledge" is and why it has been introduced in the book.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews