A good entry point would probably be the question: where does meaning reside? To many, meaning is a function of mind, or perhaps an understanding of the world around us which resides in the mind. Further consideration, though, points to a different direction.
First of all, in so far as we are discussing meaning as understood by human, we must inevitably realize that meaning cannot be separated from language. One is not complete without another. So does meaning reside in language, or perhaps is language and meaning one and the same thing? Not quite.
Without language, we cannot hope to grasp meaning. The social experience and the physical reality which forms the foundation of meaning exist as memories in our mind. For example, as a person eats when he is hungry, he experiences a feeling, a sensation. When he is being pursued by a predator, he experiences another sensation. These feelings, as well as his knowledge of physical objects, such as fire, or water, forms the foundation to meaning. In that sense, meaning cannot be separated from an understanding of one’s immediate surrounding. But understanding alone is not sufficient to derive meaning. Meaning emerges (as I’ve discussed briefly in a previous article) as two persons attempt to communicate their experiences and knowledge of the world to each other. In order for this communication to happen, a common symbol must be developed to refer to the same matter. These symbols become language. In that sense, meaning can also be viewed as residing in between people, as an abstraction of the collective understanding of the world, along with the existence of language.
An acute reader should become aware of the underlying assumption to the emergence of meaning and formation of language as described above. It is that the people involved, must already possess experience and an understanding of the world which are similar, if not identical. This is also an important factor and foundation to the existence of meaning. It is thus important to bear in mind, even as modern society evolve, that what has meaning to a group of people, and individuals which come from a certain group, might not have the same meaning to another. Even if, in modern society, the evolution of language has progressed to such a stage where symbols used in language are often defined and set down on (figurative) paper, it still doesn’t mean that these symbols can transmit meaning. This is because the foundation of meaning is common understanding and experience.
Thus far, based on our observation, we’ve described meaning as thus: it is based first and foremost, on common understanding and experience of the world, and that it resides in between people, in that it is a product of the communication process.
To take these observations further, we must also note that once a meaning is developed, it can also reside in the memory, and thus the “mind”, of an individual. But meaning as resides with individual, is different in quality with the collective meaning. This is the dual nature of meaning. First, its emergence was the consequence of common understanding and experience, and thus acquire a collective nature: it must be something common to a group of people. The method of arriving at this common experience and understanding is irrelevant: the group may acquire it during their activities together, or individually. Some common experiences are shaped by a common physical reality. However, the collective nature of meaning, also stand in contrast against the individual nature of it. Although termed as “common”, these experiences were learned through different individuals. And each individual’s interpretation and actual experience of what is “common” are most likely different in detail. For example, “hunger” is a common human experience. But to some, hunger merely means getting up to find food, to some, it produce fear and uncertainty about the future. When one individual said to another: “I am hungry”, he is attempting to express his individual circumstance through the knowledge of a collective meaning. In that sense, meaning is both a collective property, and a private one: we can only be sure of our own experience, as we, and only we, as individuals go through our own experience, but when we become aware of the commonality of these experiences, and the symbols (language) to express them, and that more than just us go through them, we become aware of the meaning of it, or rather, these experiences acquire a meaning. This the fundamental mechanism of communication.
In short, meaning must be rooted in common experience, and it is both a collective phenomenon, and an individual one. It is by nature social, because the emergence and the usage of “meaning” is restricted to a social environment, meaning in between people, and is the result of communication.
Language as a (primary) form of meaning
But for meaning to exist in this world, it cannot be without form. Language is the form of meaning. That is why language emerge together with meaning, because at the first instance of the emergence of meaning, it immediately required a form, and that form became what we now know as language.
“Language has a pre-intellectual root”, in that the physical mechanism which formed the phenomenon of language, such as our ability to produce sound, our ability to use body for gesturing and creating and using tools etc, must have developed long before the advent of language. These mechanics of forms are crucial for our form of language. We do not need to stretch our imagination too far to know that should our physical reality differ from what they are, we will develop a completely different sets of language, as evident by the sign language used by the deaf and mute, or Braille writing system developed for the blind. Even produced upon the foundation of existing predominant human language, they are so different that a common person will not understand them without conscious effort to learn them. This is simply on account on the physical limitation of the user, while many human experiences remain common.
These physical limitation shaped the form of language, and in turn shaped that form of expression of meaning. And because meaning takes the form of these physical limitation, it is easy to look at the form of meaning (language) and conclude that it is the result of human physical limitation, rather than his social experience and physical surrounding.
The nature of language
As language as a form evolves, it acquires certain patterns and characteristic particular to this form, and began to restrict and shape the expression of meaning, and ultimately, the very meaning which the language is trying to express. This is easy to understand when compared with the evolution of utensils, such as a spoon or a folk. These tools were created to facilitate eating, and in the beginning, they came in all shapes and sizes. But as these tools evolved, the shape and size began to become more standardized, and subsequently react upon the way we eat.
It is during the standardization of language, that it began to acquire its own meaning, since it became part of the common experience of human society. This is what sends the grammarist and structural linguists into a Don Quixote quest. As language becomes part of human social experience, it seems to acquire its own existence, and it is easy to forget that it is fundamentally a form of meaning, and without studying the substance behind the form, the study of form itself cannot be whole, or, to play a bad pun, is meaningless.
Akin to the dual nature of meaning, language possesses a dual nature as well. First and foremost, language exists when two persons are communicating. This is the actual language. This language serves the purpose of transmitting meaning between the two individuals, and can be considered as their “private” language. This is the language that serves the transmission of meaning. But language, to be effective and efficient, must serve more than two persons. Ideally, it should serve all humanity. In order to have that kind of reach, language, as a form, must be defined and described, formalized, so that it can be easily acquired by all members of the community, and that it contains definite rules of usage, and well defined “meaning”, so as to avoid confusion among users. This latter, is the collective language, and it is the language which usurps the role of meaning, and as a result, defines and controls meaning as if it is but a subset of language, not the source of it.
Language must be of both nature, because its substance, meaning, is of both nature. Its emergent and evolution are inseparable from the dual nature of meaning.
There is a need for language to be of a collective nature, because much of the human experiences are common. It will not be economically sound for every two humans to develop their private language, both to the human as a physical being (expenditure of brain resource), and human as a social being (community development). However, due to the private nature of meaning, a unified form to express meaning inevitably produce misunderstanding: what the meaning behind one individual usage of a certain sets of language might differ widely from the other individual. This would be manageable when the difference in experience is small enough, but soon it would have come to a point where such difference cause confusions among the users. This would be where language began its own evolution process.
And because grammarians forget that language is rooted in meaning, which in turns is rooted in common experience, they saw the confusion of meaning, which is in fact a difference in experience, as the result of the confusion of the structure of language, i.e., they misdiagnosed the symptom as the cause. As a result, language workers throughout the ages, but especially during the reign of structuralism, begin adding rules to language itself, in hope that when everyone speaks the same way, they will eliminate the possibility of confusions.
Therein lies the root of the separation of language and mind. Or at least our understanding of them.
When there is a breakdown in communication, the fault lies not with the language, but with the experience of the parties involved. The language used reflects their experience, not as some may belief, that the language used was insufficient to reflect their experiences and thereby causing the miscommunication.
But language is of two natures: it must be so. Even though through natural development, human has created a separate dimension to language, and assigned new assumption to language as phenomenon, it cannot, and will not, lose its original function, which is to serve as the form of meaning.
And thus, to use language truly and effectively, fulfilling its original and sole purpose, it is important to bear in mind that the foundation of meaning is common experience, and that when communication breakdown occurs, do not first review the language (although it might be useful to review the language as it might lead you to the discrepancies in experience), but attempt to understand the other’s experience, so that you may seek common ground and create meaning again.
The role of a structured collective language
It may seem from the above paragraph that the collective structured language might be responsible for communication problems and it might be best to do away with it. This is not an unreasonable deduction, although one drawn much too quick.
What exists exists for a reason.
The emergence of a collective language is not an “error”, nor is it incidental. It serve a human need, although one that is different from its proclaimed purpose to provide a “standard”, in so far as we understand “standard” as an attempt to straight jacket the expression of meaning.
Thus far, we have only considered the usage of a language in its social and natural environment. When we come to the acquisition of language, be it for a child acquiring its native language or a foreign speaker acquiring a new local language, a structured collective language serve the purpose of an effective and efficient entry point. Without the existence of a structure collective language, it will be much harder for a learner to acquire a language (much harder for a second language learner), and total immersion in the target language is almost a must. With the existence of a structured collective language, the learner are given a quick summary of the language. However, such “standard” language does not represent the highest form or the most “correct” form of the language: a correctly constructed collective language should always be the lowest common denominator. Meaning if one is to follow the collective language, one should be able to be understood by other users of the language, but it doesn’t mean one can understand other, more experienced users of the language. It is bordering on absurdity when many people consider the “standard” collective to be the most “correct” or “desired” form of language, and demanded that more experience users of the language to tailor their usage according to a “standard”, all the while unaware or forgetting that the collective merely offers a starting point.
In short, a structured collective language serve as a starting point, not an end point. It serves to introduce, not to restrict. It is a tragedy that many language workers view otherwise.
This is not an excuse to not use language properly. As the sole purpose of language is to transmit meaning, any language user should use a language which is most appropriate to his audience. But when he is unsure of what is appropriate for his audience, the language user must be able to fall back to the lowest common denominator. Language user should consider his audience, not himself, and not a nebulous “Standard” of language.