**** Representation, communication, and language

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Language serves two functions: representation and communication. Language is not the only thing to serve these functions--any semiotic system used by beings capable of agency can do the same. Cheyney's and Seyfarth's work with vervet monkeys (1), and ???'s work with bee dances (2) show both representation and communication in non-humans. What is particular to humans is the self-reflexive patterns of language that make possible an infinite variety of utterances from a finite stock of parts. Infinite variety is a prerequisite for creativity; a finite stock is necessary for shared meaning. The self-reflexive patterns of language are not properties of the functions themselves; such patterns are a property of the ways the functions are structured and used. (3) From hence do these patterns arise? In order to approach this question, a clear picture of what representation and communication are--and are not--needs to be gained.

To represent is to make a passage, in either direction, between form and meaning. It may entail deriving meanings from forms or channeling meanings into forms. Representation is the act of traversing, not the path or direction traversed. There are two directions of representation: comprehension and production. Comprehension involves the derivation of meaning from forms. Production of language involves mapping meaning onto forms in a particular way (i.e. When you talk to me the meaning that I hear is autonomous of the meaning that you produced). Represented meanings can only be connected via forms.

To communicate is to broadcast these forms in a such a way that an audience can receive them. The act requires agency, but not intent, on the parts of both the broadcaster and an audience of one or more. (4) Communication takes place between the broadcast and reception of these forms. An act of communication begins when an agent emits represented forms; it ends when received by a sentient being. It occurs after the last step of production and before the first moment of comprehension. It occurs external to the parties involved. To communicate is to have one's representation produce others by means of forms _assumed_ to be shared among them. As such, communication is an effect of representation.

Taking place wholly outside of the agents involved, communication is an object in itself; it takes place "out there," in "reality." Yet at the same it is time wholly dependent on the representations of its agents. What are the requirements of such an entity? How could it be autonomous and dependent, objective and subjective, simultaneously? Only its form takes place externally--this is the autonomous part. Meaning is what is wholly dependent, and any assumption of shared meaning, rather than partially shared forms, requires an assumption of intersubjectivity.

What evidence is there for intersubjectivity? Is it necessary for communication to take place? Can a model of communication do without intersubjectivity yet avoid fading into an infinite regress of alienation and private meanings? Communication is considered successful, or ideal, in intersubjective models if all parties derive the same meanings from the communicated forms. Intersubjectivity resides at the assumption that norms are interchangeable with meanings. The only way to test this is to negotiate and match forms to subjective, private meanings until agreement and clarity are reached. This matches Habermas's conceptions of language having ideal communication for its universal goal.

Habermas's ideal communication assumption -- two entities

meaning 1 uttered | >> communicated >> | meaning 1 heard

................ | .................. | \/ \/ \/ \/

meaning 2 heard | << communicated << | meaning 2 uttered

\/ \/ \/ \/ | .................. | ..................

meaning 3 uttered | >> communicated >> | meaning 3 heard

................. | .................. | \/ \/ \/ \/

meaning 4 heard | << communicated << | meaning 4 uttered

\/ \/ \/ \/ | .................. | ..................

etc., until meaning = form = meaning

Habermas claims that his model of ideal communication is emancipatory, requiring the same inputs from societal norms that would alleviate oppression and exploitation. This assumes two things, first, that the student of communication, the observer or analyst of it, can be detached from the processes under study, a practice that Habermas is ostensibly critiquing. Second, it assumes that scholars or analysts can decide what is best for some community, and who the members of that community are, and what their roles are, better than the members could themselves. Perhaps the community could be free if only they did as they were told. For example, assume a two-person interaction: a speaker says "Take out the trash." A hearer hears "Take the day off." Communication has happened. It is only less-than-ideal from an outsider's perspective. The speaker and the hearer might both think that communication had happened ideally. They have drawn their meanings, as has the outsider. To assume the outsider can make a better judgment is to assume that s/he has access to both meanings, via intersubjectivity.

The only way to gain that access is through communication, in which case the outsider is no longer an outsider but a participant, subject to the same problems of perspective and meaning as the speaker and the hearer. If they do not have intersubjectivity, how is one to assume that the outside observer somehow had it? Everyone has their self-affirmed meanings, but none are testable except for their forms.

Another problem with ideal communication models is the privileging of clarity. This is not always a goal of communication. The loss of ambiguity and multiple interpretations might be a gain for Habermas, but might also be considered a great loss to poets, politicians as well as a few social theorists. For example, neither a rousing political speech nor a series of campaign promises is designed to mean the same thing to every person. The most effective such speeches are the ones that set off the most reactions--not the ones that are understood most clearly. While this may be a crude form of politics compared to what Habermas is concerned with, the mobilization of large groups of people to a common cause invariably involves just this type of ambiguity. Ideal communication in such circumstances is to have the same message take many meanings.

An alternative to this would be to derive a model that allows communication without requiring intersubjectivity. One such model would be if communication were the byproduct, rather than the intent, of representation. Communication does not always require intent. A slip of the tongue or trembling may communicate much that was unintended. Nonetheless, such communications are the result of representation by both the producer and receiver of them. a system that accounts for these observations might take the following synchronic form:

speaker/hearer 1 | "reality" | speaker/hearer 2

| |

REPRESENTATION | COMMUNICATION | REPRESENTATION

| |

|-> form >broadcast>>--\/--<<broadcast< form <-|

meaning-| \//\ | utterances | /\\/ |-meaning

|-< form <receive <<---\/--->> receive> form >-|

| |

Two speakers/hearers are shown. Because communication is external, any number of speaker/hearers could participate. Communication takes place when broadcast representations are received. The synchronic/systemic direction of communication is unambiguous. One cannot broadcast by receiving or receive by broadcasting. An analogy would be a speaker and a microphone--both are the same thing--a speaker can be employed as a microphone and vice versa, but not at the same time--it functions unambiguously as one or the other at any moment.

However, the synchronic version is inadequate for explaining representation, because direction between form and meaning needs to be unspecified. In a diachronic implementation, the passage between forms and meaning at any one instant within each speaker/hearer would have an overall direction, or flow, either toward forms or toward meaning.

A continuous input from meaning into forms would continually change the forms into other forms which would still be driven by input of meaning. This is the process of reflection. At any point in the process, two options in addition to the continuing input of meaning are available--either to broadcast the forms or to change direction and derive new recombinations of meaning from the forms. A broadcast form may be received by any sentient being within its reach--including its source. Once received, the form can be re-broadcast--the equivalent of repeating aloud something not understood--or it can be entered into the formal processing loop in such a way that meaning can interact with it and be derived from it.

Tests performed on people who have had commisurotomies--the severence of the corpus callosum--show externally how some internal form-to-form interchanges might normally take place. In such people, the left and right sides of one's sensory fields (processed by the right and left hemispheres, respectively) are literally cut off from each other. Such people are able to verbally identify items shown to them in their right visual field (processed by the speech-producing areas in the right hemisphere), but not in their left. Even so, such persons are able to select the object pictured from a group of real objects, although they then misidentify them when asked to explain what they are holding. Right brain explanations of left-brain sensory data go to great lengths to make sense of what is happening, fabricating explanations when none are available through normal channels

recent studies-- meaning is global

b) -continuous input from meaning to form (no reflection) then broadcast to self-receive: This is (a) externalized.

evidence: dichotic listening tests, corpus callosum--see new Brain and behaviorial linguistics or whatever as well... split brains figure out the answers by self-communication--they broadcast forms externally instead of across corpus callosum in order to reach an agreed meaning. Is this meaning intersubjective? In unsplit brains, formal exchange takes place between hemispheres. Meaning is subjective and not localized in a part of the brain.

c) multiple broadcasts -- party communicates to neighbor...

d) multiple receptors --public speech

multiple broadcasters and receptors--limited by co-procvessing skills--confusion

e) intent: Peirce community of inquirers after truth--dispensed with--it is reception with no broadcast. H's ideal speech situation dispatched similarly--intent or orientation toward something not required for communication to occur. It is a req. of both H and Peirce's model, however.

• ........................................... \/PgDn\/ for sources
• .............................................. /\PgUp/\ for text

para 1.

Seyfarth and Cheyney on Vervet rep. and communication

The bee guy.

General inspiration arises from Chomsky and Bickerton on this, although....

1) Vervets

2) Bee stuff

3) recursion/reflexiveness as particular to humans

4) what is an audience, that it can receive broadcasts?

ageny but not intent--why does it require agency?--representation is an act of agency--the passage between meaning and form must be traversed willfully (though not necessarily consciously).

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and

application and ramifications and evidence for pidgins as communicative rather than representational: <[LINK]>

other models of function: <[LINK]>

I think this can be explained in evolutionary terms that serve to clarify some of the differrences between bioprogram and substratois approaches.

As language is made, it can be further performed as a speech act, or a written act. For the Deaf,* it may be performed as a visible act. Perhaps it will be half-formed, recycled, ruminated upon, listened to, revised and then left unexpressed to anyone but the person who formulated it. All these are meaning mapped onto language, though the modes of expression vary. Transcending the boundaries of self--what Chomsky calls performance--is not a necessary ingredient of representation.

language:

meaning/form cycle of reflection drives the broadcast of a lexical chain....receive chain and put into form/meaning cycle.

What is chainlike about a lexical chain?

it is chainlike temporally--it comes out serially, but in a way that is linked to and constrained by its temporal antecedents and successors. The form/meaning and meaning/form cycles are the locus of heads, which being continuous and cyclical, act differently through time than chains. While the cycles are systemic, meaning, like broadcasting and receiveing, is probably connected toi the system linearly and operates in temporal chains as well.

Clarity noit a goal--ambiguity of representation so that others represent their own stuff--faulty communication?--no excellent manipulation of the forms to set off representations in audience...

Critique of ideal communication

Comm. as external object,

comm alway intended

agents as objects with intent

observer of system as detached from it

incapable of establishing direction that matches observed beh.

privileges clarity

requires intersubjectivity as a given