The power of words public speaking

Untitled THE POWER OF WORDS ROBIN ALLOTT Language Origins Society, Amsterdam 1990 What I want to emphasise is the unrecognised power of words the value of the individual word We take words language. Use this as a topic for public speaking

THE POWER OF WORDS

ROBIN ALLOTT

[Language Origins Society, Amsterdam 1990]

What I want to emphasise is the unrecognised power of words the value of the individual word We take words - language - very much for granted, just as we take our eyes, our power

of vision for granted But both are tremendously flexible and wide-ranging powers - which have hardly been described in any complete way, never mind explained.The paper is intended to do two main things to categorise and illustrate the power of words, the different roles which language plays Second, to assess the relevance for each of the areas considered of the motor theory of language evolution and function Language is a powerful instrument It is used in many different ways and constitutes one of the principal forces controlling and forming human behaviour Besides its most familiar and normally most discussed use, communication, language is important through its use in one's private thought, in science and in oratory, in poetry, in philosophy - and perhaps most remarkably in techniques of hypnosis.

The power of words is considered in six areas:

Communication: How is it that words effectively represent the world,

and allow the perception of the world by one individual to betransmitted to another?

Science: How can words grasp the real (unseen and unseeable) causal

structure of the world, allow this structure from generation togeneration to be refined and strengthened?

Philosophy: How through the manipulation of words could one arrive

at some final understanding of 'everything' (the ambition of themetaphysicians)?

Poetry: How, in poetry, does language succeed in stimulating

complex thought or emotion, creating a pattern of words which ispermanent?

Oratory: How can words mould the minds of individuals and form

them into a group, and then control the action of the group?

Hypnosis: How can the words of the hypnotist take control of the

mind of another individual and determine his actions and perceptions?How can language succeed (generally) in each of these roles?

COMMUNICATION

Communication is changing someone's mind, physically The neuralpatterning is altered In communication, however, the exact words don't

matter The words disappear from memory very quickly; the meaningremains Let me repeat that: The important thing is not whichparticular words you use It's the meaning that matters.Contrast withpoetry, oratory and advertising where the individual words chosenmatter very greatly.

Words crystallise our thoughts Make our thoughts recoverable Makethe thought of others recoverable How is it that words effectivelyrepresent the world, and allow the perception of the world by oneindividual to be transmitted to another?

What is the essence of communication? Information transfer is theresult of communication but not the essence of it Information theory

as such has very little relevance for communication by speech Thetheory is concerned with the external channels of communication, notwith the meaning, the content of the communication How do wordsoperate to convey information? What is to be explained -specifically ?The fundamental question is how it is that we come to know the world

in terms of words How do words function as a grasp on the everydayworld? How does language acquire this power? What do words do inthis role? How do they do it? There is something to be explained!One may say that the power of words in communication is a derivedpower: but what is it derived from? There have been attemptedexplanations, particularly in terms of words and language operating as

a symbolic system

If you think of language only as a symbolic system, this does not carryone much further The idea of 'symbol', or 'symbolic system' isunclear 'Symbol' loosely used is an academic word, a mystifyingword, used by different people in many different ways and often withquite contrary senses Using 'symbolic system' as pretending to be anadequate account of language is as unhelpful as those philosopherswho use 'sense-data' and 'representations' as accounts of the process ofvision, the process of perception Listen to a child three or four yearsold using language articulately to express its wants, its opinions, itsobservations There is something miraculous about the clarity andpurposefulness of the speech of little children Explain it simply asthe functioning of a symbolic system? Arithmetic uses what is clearly

a symbolic system, of numbers - much simpler in its elements thanthose of language But little children do not automatically gain fluency

in using arithmetic symbols as they do in using words If words andlanguage are in some way a symbolic system, they must be a veryspecial type of symbolic system

What could we mean by 'symbols' in relation to language? We arefamiliar with some well-known powerful symbols:

National symbols: Rising Sun, Hammer and Sickle, Swastika, Flags

generally Religious symbols: Cross, Crescent, Chakra, Keys, Fish,Images, Icons Royal symbols: Crown, Orb, Sceptre Institutionalsymbols: Judges' wigs, Policemen's helmets, Military uniform andrank symbols Group symbols: Football colours, Blackshirts, Scoutuniforms and badges Academic symbols: Mathematical symbols:+ - / =, symbols in chemistry and other sciences Warning symbols: Danger:radiation,electricity (zigzag, skull and crossbones], Traffic symbols(Red/Green, School crossing, Falling rocks, Sharp corner)

In these examples, the symbol has some obvious association withwhat it refers to or, in some way, forms part of the experience to which

it relates But if words are symbols, how does the word have anobvious association to its meaning? How does the word form part ofthe experience to which it relates? The explanation in terms of themotor theory is that the word is the product or reflection of the alreadyestablished integration of motor control with the neural organisation

of perception

This can be explained more vividly in terms of what I would call 'theCartoon principle' The word is a cartoon of the thing or action Wordsare cartoons of the world outside ourselves A cartoon has a structuralrelation to what it is a cartoon of The parallelism is between themotor program involved in the saying of the word, and the motorprogram involved in the action to which the word refers, or in theperception of the thing to which the word refers This is directlylinked to the evolutionary origin of language, as derived from themotor basis of language which made possible the cerebral integration

of motor control, perception and language Through its integrationwith the neural organisation of perception and action, languageacquired the power to represent experience both of the external worldand of the internal world of the individual

The source of the power of words is their individual relationship toperception and action It is through this relationship that words areeffective in communication

SCIENCE

OED: "Science A branch of study which is concerned with either aconnected body of demonstrated truths or with observed factssystematically classified and more or less colligated by being broughtunder general laws and which includes trustworthy methods for thediscovery of new truth within its own domain The kind ofknowledge or intellectual activity of which the 'sciences' areexamples

Language of course is not the only remarkable intellectual powerwhich humans possess Equally remarkable there is Mathematics, anindependent power which together with language constitutes modern

Science Science is a system consisting of a network of theoriesexpressed in words The theories are framed in terms of namedentities (time, space,energy, electron, field, galaxy, oxygen).Thetheories formulate laws which usually employ mathematical symbols

to relate the entities in the particular branch of science to one another.Scientists typically communicate by means of words and symbols(mathematical, chemical, etc,) Science involves communication but isobviously a rather special type of communication

What specifically has to be explained about the role of words inScience? It is how words used in science are able to grasp the real(unseen and unseeable) causal structure of the world, and allowunderstanding of this structure to be progressively refined and to betransmitted from one generation of scientists to the next

An essential feature of science is the theory What is 'a theory'? TheOED shows how the term has been used:

A conception or mental scheme of something to be done or of themethod of doing it (1597) A scheme or system of ideas asexplanation or account of a group of facts or phenomena (1638)Mental view (1710)

The original meaning of theory (THEORIA) was 'viewing', 'a sight'.Science is a mode of perception A theory is a systematic perception

of a realm of scientific facts In Science, words are used to name newentities (positron, gene) or to relate the results of new investigations

to previously-named entities In Science, words are being extended ornarrowed to cover a different range of scientific experience

The history of science has very largely been bound up with thesystematisation and extension of observation Scientists have extendedperception beyond normal, everyday limits This has been madepossible by the development of new or improved instruments:Telescopes, Microscopes, Measuring Instruments, Cameras,Television (from Space), Computer graphics, Models (DNA), NMR,PET, X-rays, Radio waves

There has been a continuing shift in science from immediateperception to remote, abstract perception Besides the new orimproved instruments, a key factor has been the vigorous exercise ofscientific imagination, usually visual imagination Eminent examplesare Copernicus (the solar system), Newton (the falling apple and thefalling moon),Einstein (gravity and relativity theory by way of visualimaginings of trams, lifts, measuring rods) The role of visualimagination in the progress of science has been investigated JacquesHadamard in 1945 undertook a famous inquiry among Americanmathematicians to find out their working methods This produced thestriking conclusion that nearly all of them (with only two exceptions)

tackled their problems neither in verbal terms nor by algebraicsymbols, but called on visual imagery of a vague, hazy nature Einsteinhimself wrote: 'The words of the language as they are written orspoken do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought which relies on more or less clear images of a visual and some of amuscular type.'(Note 2) Most of the creative scientists, who havedescribed their working methods, seem to have been visualisers.

But even if the advance of science necessarily depends on theextension or intensification of perception, the use of visualimagination, it still remains the case that words, language, play animportant role The classic discussion of the relation betweenlanguage and scientific progress is in Kuhn's (1970) The Structure ofScientific Revolutions (Note 3) In his view, scientific knowledge,like language, is intrinsically the common property of a group.Neither scientists nor laymen learn to see the world piecemeal or item

by item Both scientists and laymen sort out whole areas together fromthe flux of experience The current form of a science depends upondiscovering what isolable elements the members of the particularscientific community may have abstracted from their more globalparadigms and deployed as rules in their research Textbooks aim tocommunicate the vocabulary and syntax of a contemporary scientificlanguage The Copernicans who denied the traditional title 'planet' tothe sun were changing the vocabulary, the meaning of 'planet'

There can be no scientifically or empirically neutral system oflanguage or concepts The practice of normal science depends on theability, acquired from exemplars, to group objects and sensations intosimilarity sets which are primitive in the sense that the grouping isdone without an answer to the question, 'Similar with respect to what?'.That sort of learning is not acquired by exclusively verbal means.Rather it comes as one is given words together with concreteexamples of how they function in use; nature and words are learnedtogether; learning from problems to see situations as like each other,

as subjects for the application of the same scientific law or sketch For a given science, there is a disciplinary matrix, the commonpossession of the practitioners of the particular discipline,composed

law-of ordered elements Kuhn remarks that if the student law-of Newtoniandynamics ever discovers the meaning of terms like 'force', 'mass','space' and 'time', he does so less from the incomplete definitions inhis text than by observing and participating in the application of theseconcepts to problem- solution He has to acquire the same gestalt asother members of his specialists' group, a time-tested and group-licensed way of seeing

But whilst in these ways scientific knowledge is systematised andpreserved, it is also necessary that there should be a mechanism forscientific change Any new interpretation of nature, whether adiscovery or a theory, emerges first in the mind of one or a few

individuals It is they who first learn to see science and the worlddifferently To make the transition to Einstein's universe, the wholeconceptual web whose strands are space, time, matter, force and so on,had to be shifted and laid down again on nature whole This need tochange the meaning of established and familiar concepts is central tothe revolutionary impact of Einstein's theory the scientific revolution

as a displacement of the conceptual network through which scientistsview the world A scientific theory is usually felt to be better than itspredecessors not only in the sense that it is a better instrument fordiscovering and solving puzzles but also because it is somehow abetter representation of what nature is really like A science'sreorientation is a process that involves 'handling the same bundle ofdata as before, but placing them in a new system of relations with oneanother by giving them a different framework' Others haveemphasised its similarity to a change in visual gestalt: the marks onpaper that were first seen as a bird are now seen as an antelope There

is even evidence that these same characteristics [those involved inscientific discovery] are built into the nature of the perceptual processitself

Though Kuhn's account agrees with other evidence that the origin ofscientific advance is in perception, not in words or in verbal analysis,nevertheless science is dependent on words both for communicationbetween scientists and for the preservation of the content of scienceover time Scientific progress reflects in words changes in scientificperception The words used in science are not arbitrary Many of thewords in the scientific lexicon are those familiar from ordinary uses oflanguage The first scientific words were ordinary words, water, sun,light, sound The progress of scientific language has taken threeforms: the first has been to add to or define more sharply the content,the reference, of ordinary words used in scientific contexts; some ofthe greatest progress has come from this e.g extension or closerdefinition of words such as rest, motion, force, weight, heat, light Thesecond type of change in scientific language has taken the form ofborrowing from other languages (particularly Greek and Latin); thewords borrowed have been ordinary words in the original languagesbut have been given a special application in scientific use The thirdtype of change in scientific language has been the creation of newwords for new observational complexes; even these words are notarbitrary They are chosen to fit the existing network of scientificwords and to give some indication of their application or meaning.The most arbitrary words in science are adapted from the surnames ofscientific discoverers: Newton, Ohm, Watt, Pascal, Hertz, Volt,Maxwell, Henry.Most of these words refer to forces etc which are notvisible and are outside the range of ordinary human experience.Nevertheless, they have been chosen so as to maintain links with pre-existing structures of ideas or prior scientific experience

How relevant for scientific language is the account given in the motor

theory of the origin of words? The ordinary words used in science(including borrowed words) carry with them their primitive 'cartoon'contours - e.g muscle-spindle, tangent, foot, bacterium, wave,mammal, digit, scale Scientific concepts are anchored to the structures

of ordinary sense, of 'commonsense', by words such as these and, ofcourse, function- words in science [ and, or, all, from, to etc.] are theordinary function-words Other than new words for forces, particlesetc where there can be no ordinary perception of the objects or actionsinvolved, the sound-shapes of words in science have the same origin

as the sound-shapes of ordinary words The process of narrowing orextending the meanings of scientific words is much the same process

as takes place with ordinary words; children extend or narrow themeanings of words as their experience widens It seems justifiable toconclude that there is continuity between the development and use ofordinary words in ordinary communication and the development anduse of the more specialised words in science For both sets of words,the power of the words derives from their links with perception andaction

PHILOSOPHY

Science has been successful, philosophy on the whole has not Thismakes the question of the power of words in philosophy differentfrom that of the power of words in science Uncertainty about thenature and objectives of philosophy adds to the difficulty

OED: That department of knowledge or study which deals withultimate reality, or with the most general causes and principles ofthings

Views about the nature and achievements of philosophy vary widely.Some authors have been reasonably optimistic, others extremelypessimistic, others think that although little has been achieved sofar,philosophy may yet find some fruitful line of progress Below are afew examples of each tendency

Optimistic:

An enlightening and satisfying interpretation of the universe.'Completely unified knowledge', in contrast with the 'partly unifiedknowledge' of science (Spencer)(Note 4) The mind's insight intowhat knowing is.(Hegel)(Note 5)

Pessimistic:

A futile battle between combatants clad in impenetrable armour Thespectacle of philosophers quarrelling endlessly over the sameissues.(Rorty) (Note 6) The scandalous fact that after more than 2000years philosophers are still unclear about what philosophy is

(Ambrose) (Note 7) The way these cusses slip so fluently off into the'Idea' etc and undertake to give a logical explanation ofeverything which is so palpably trumped up after the facts (James)(Note 8)

A middle view:

There is no reason to believe that philosophical enquiries are by theirvery nature, inconclusive.This was a remediable fault of philosophers,due to premature system-building and impatient ambition, which leftthem neither the inclination nor the time to assemble the facts,impartially and cooperatively, and then to build their unifying theories,cautiously and slowly, on a collective, and therefore secure, base.(Austin) (Note 9) There is no hard-and-fast line between scientificand metaphysical problems All our scientists are describing the sameworld but in many different languages Put their descriptions into asingle language, which will reveal the common features of the world.(Note 10)

What could be plausible objectives for philosophy?

- to accommodate the human mind in the conceptual structure ofscience? - to unite subject and object? - to unite mind and brain, mindand body? - to understand understanding?

But where, if one pursues one or other of these objectives, should oneput language, the role, the power of words in philosophy? Untilcomparatively recently, philosophers paid surprisingly little attention

to the role of language, even though philosophy relies on languageand the analysis of language more than any other intellectual pursuit.Hegel himself made only scattered and unimportant references tolanguage, In Descartes, as Merleau-Ponty has pointed out, "itsmediating role may pass unnoticed Descartes nowhere mentions it never even mentions language as the condition of the reading of thecogito." (Note 11)

In this century, philosophers have become 'sensitised' to language,though often in only limited respects, not recognising the totaldependence of all philosophising on the use of words, and theobjective of philosophers as being essentially to create a unifiedstructure of words

The concern with language has taken various forms Wittgenstein'searly and later work was preoccupied with language The centralquestion of the Tractatus is: How is language possible? How can aman, by uttering a sequence of words, say something? "One is oftenbewitched by a word For example, by the word 'know'" (note 12)Though finally he was pessimistic about the potential of philosophy:

"It can never be our job to reduce anything to anything, or to explain

anything Philosophy really is 'purely descriptive'

Another manifestation of a new interest in language was thedevelopment of the 'ordinary language' school (chiefly in Oxford).The guiding idea of this was that ordinary language is more subtle andless confused than the earlier linguistic philosophers had supposedand something could be learnt from the study of use in ordinarylanguage of key terms in philosophy Our common stock of wordsembodies [ connections and distinctions] likely to be morenumerous, more sound, since they have stood up to the long test of thesurvival of the fittest, and more subtle, at least in all ordinary andreasonably practical matters, than any that you and I are likely to think

up in our armchairs of an afternoon - the most favoured alternativemethod (Austin) (Note 13) But he [Austin] accepted that evenalthough 'as a preliminary' the philosopher must track down in detailthe ordinary use of words, in the end he will always be compelled 'tostraighten them out to some degree' (Note 14)

A parallel line of thought (Ryle) was that many of the problems ofphilosophers derive from their own misuse of ordinary terms inlanguage; the misuse of words like 'know' and 'mind', 'believe', 'doubt','infer' and so on (Note 15) Misconstructions and absurd theorieswould be revealed and many so-called philosophical problems woulddisappear And others thought that a concern with language wasirrelevant(Popper): "Language is no more than a kind of spectaclesthrough which one looks at the world: "one shouldn't waste one's life

in spectacle-cleaning or in talking about language" (Note 16) Anotherview emphasised the likely need to reform the basic terms ofphilosophy According to Feyerabend, our everyday language itselfincorporates theories; we can hope to make advances in such tangledfields as the mind-body problem only if we are prepared to recognisethat there may need to be wholesale changes in our ordinary modes ofusing such expressions as 'thought' and 'sensation' (Note 16)

The emphasis in England and the United States on the role oflanguage in philosophy was unwelcome to most Continentalphilosophers So Van Breda: "the thesis that the sole point of contactwith that reality which philosophy wishes to understand is language isentirely inadmissible To say that the reality we wish to understand isconceptual reality is still more objectionable" The philosopher wants

to understand not conceptual reality, but the world in which we live, inall its complexity" (Note 17)

But if an approach by way of language is impracticable or undesirable,what alternative is there? The other more traditional approach was interms of perception, analysis of the ways in which we come to knowthe world This approach also was widely thought to have reached adead-end with Kant's Critique; the 'thing-in-itself' is unknowable All

we have access to are the categories into which our experience must

fall; we cannot escape from ourselves to achieve any real knowledge

of the world More recently, Merleau-Ponty and Konrad Lorenz havesuggested ways of escaping from the Kantian dilemma Merleau-Ponty's rallying cry has been 'Back to perception' in terms of a body-subject involved in perception (Note 18) Lorenz as a biologistformulates the answer to the Kantian dilemma in the following terms::

"The cognitive apparatus is itself an objective reality which hasacquired its present form through contact with and adaptation toequally real things in the outer world The 'spectacles' of our modes ofthought and perception, such as causality, substance, quality, time andplace (the Kantian categories) are functions of a neurosensoryorganisation that has evolved in the service of survival What weexperience is a real image of reality, albeit an extremely simple one,only just sufficing for our practical purposes" (Note 19)

Both of these responses to Kant seem valid The philosophicalimpasse of perception is resolved by the evolutionary and historicalconvergence of the organisation of the perceiving subject and the realperceived world For Kant, human understanding 'prescribes its laws tonature' - but evolution, developing nature, had much earlier inbiological history 'prescribed' to the human mind its categories andfunctioning, to accord with the real world The integration ofperception, action and language, combined with the true knowledge ofthe external world which the evolution of the cognitive and visualapparatus has made possible, opens the way to a new pursuit ofphilosophical truth through language For the human race, the Kantianforms of understanding have, as a result of evolutionary development,become embodied in our neurological and physiological structures.The perceiving subject and the perceived object are equally real.Knowledge derives from the interaction between them

Language is not 'the sole and essential point of contact for thephilosopher with reality' - and the most pressing contacts with realityimpose themselves without any intermediation of language Nor islanguage an abstract rational structure but one built on humanneurophysiological structure Language is validated by perception andaction, not the other way round Language, as a flexible instrumentdesigned to match the open-endedness of human experience,perception and action, can be a reliable medium for exploring,recording and developing man's knowledge of the external world and

of his own nature

Philosophy has in the past aspired to the certainty and success ofscience (particularly mathematics Nowadays philosophy has to takeaccount also of the striking successes of the physical and biologicalsciences The essential problem of philosophy is the problem of thewhole of which we are part, our bodies and brains as part of nature.Philosophy can advance as science increasingly tackles thephysiological and neurological foundations of human behaviour