October's Essay_On Thought and Speech, Words and Deeds.

There are several major theories and beliefs circulating around and about concerning the relationship between thought and speech. One important, because very widespread theory about that relationship is known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis; and it would seem that among linguists this theory, which claims that “the languages we speak shape the thoughts we think,” has “fallen on very bad times indeed.”

            Say the linguists: “What Whorfianism claims, in its strongest form, is that our thoughts are limited and shaped by the specific words and grammar we use. Mayans don’t just speak Mayan; they think Mayan, and therefore they think differently from English speakers.”

            As a professional polyglot rather than an academically trained linguist, I am afraid that I will have to brave the possible disdain of Academy’s linguists by affirming the very practical accuracy of the conclusion that Mayans “think differently from English speakers.” Likewise, a Frenchman does not “think” in the same way as speakers of German or English. After all, what makes languages a challenge to speak with any degree of true fluency and competency certainly has very little to do with words. Rather, to speak another language well requires, in the first instance, that we learn the voice of our own private mind, and then that we cast about to rediscover the sound of “our” voice in the non-native language; in the second instance, we must also learn the enculturated elements of the non-native language in order to discover the modus operandi, not simply of grammar and of words, but of ways of seeing and of thinking and of being that are the cultural bedrock of linguisticity.

            Of course a polyglot’s experience of the essential interplay between ambient culture and the outworking of language, which together comprise linguisiticity, has nothing to do with espousing a “philosophy” of language. And it is in this latter endeavor that linguists seem to want to include the more abstract and perennial question of language origins in human society – in other words, to interpret the factum of linguisticity into a metaphysic of language.

            Thus, twisted around in a metaphysical swizzle-stick kind of way, the statement of the linguistic problem, at least according to the analysis of this Pacific Standard reviewer, would look something like a fancified chicken-n-egg conundrum:

            “Perhaps the most famous invocation of Sapir-Whorf is the claim that because Eskimos have dozens of words for snow, they have a mental apparatus that equips them differently—and, one assumes, better—than, say, Arabs, to perceive snow. (I once watched the wintry film Fargo with an Egyptian who called everything from snowflakes to windshield-ice talg—the same word she used for the ice cube in her drink.) To get a hint of why nearly all modern linguists might reject this claim, consider the panoply of snow-words in English (sleet, slush, flurry, whiteout, drift, etc.), and the commonsense question of why we would ever think to attribute Eskimos’ sophisticated and nuanced understanding of snow to their language, rather than the other way around.”

Now, if we politely ignore the highfalutin metaphysical shenanigans that surround a question that is, at the end of the day, much less pretentious and really quite practical, the essential issues would look something like this:

1.     POSITION ONE (Whorfian): all humans are mentally alike at birth, then become diversified linguistically, culturally, physically, etc.

2.     POSITION TWO (anti-Whorfian): all humans are mentally alike at birth, and remain so.

Thankfully, although the anti-Whorfians seem to be getting preferential academic consideration at this point in time, the Pacific Standard reviewer does not find POSITION TWO entirely persuasive. His anti-enthusiasm is only lukewarm however: the “anti-Whorfian sentence ‘all humans are mentally alike’ is, for me anyway, not an immediately appealing one.” Furthermore, practically minded polyglots around the world will probably be relieved to learn that there is a minor “neo-Whorfian revival” afoot comprised of researchers who “…have found minuscule ways—far smaller than anything proposed by the original Whorfians—in which language does affect thought.” What a relief…

Perhaps for clarification, however, and in order to avoid being charged with side-stepping the issue in a smooth red herring tango, it might be reasonable for a philosophically minded polyglot to say something like: while language does not necessarily “determine” thought, it is certainly the vehicle whereby our thinking is made evident to the Other; and to whatever degree that vehicle is lamed or impeded, the expression of our thinking is, similarly, hindered. So while there may not be necessarily a deterministic link whereby it is demonstrable and indisputable that language derives from thought or thought from language – there is certainly a quasi-inextricable relationship between these two organic activities.

            The problem is, of course, that one is limited, almost axiomatically, by the potentials of available linguistic vehicles—words, grammar, and syntax. If a particular language-vehicle has no past tense verb and no way of expressing past tense verbal ideas – then the speaker of that language will simply have to express his thinking inside those confined limitations. Likewise, if a language-vehicle lacks some pointing element – then it will not “occur” to a speaker of that language to think that specific element in that specific way, because among the language tools at his disposition he does not have a tool either to conceive of (“to think”) that element, or to articulate it.

Instead of striving after some absolute ideal model of language as a Platonic universal or Kantian noumena, perhaps we need rather to comprehend languages as locally anchored “phenomena,” which therefore do necessarily reflect something important and culturally distinctive about specific groups of language speakers. Because at the end of the day, speakers of Mayan do “think” differently from speakers of English, as speakers of French “think” differently from speakers of English or German, where we understand broadly the idea of “Thinking,” which is to say that it embraces all aspects of the local culture including beliefs, values, habits of the mind, and traditions.

            There is a fragment (#7) from Aristotle’s De sensu (5, 443a 23) that reads as follows:

εἰ πάντα τὰ ὄντα καπνὸς γένοιτο, ῥῖνες ἂν διαγνοῖεν.

7. Si toutes choses devenaient fumée, on connaîtrait par les narines.

If all things were turned to smoke, the nostrils would distinguish them.

Hitching our thinking onto Aristotle’s proverb, it would ultimately seem that the philosophical question for POSITION TWO (anti-Whorfianism) becomes: why is it that all cultures (analogically akin to Aristotle’s nose) do not learn to distinguish, and then to articulate, all the different types of smoke (or snow, or...) the world offers to our senses? In the absence of a clear and plausible “general” answer to this question, it would still seem that the best “truth” concerning this linguistic problem, both practically and philosophically conceived, lies in some variation of POSITION ONE (Whorfianism), which very reasonably conceives of “Language,” or rather linguisticity, as a universal or noumenal "capacity," which then devolves, much like the Platonic Ideal City translated into the real arena of men and of cities, into all of the various and sundry phenomenal manifestations of enculturated language in the world.

On a less ostentatious note: this brief Moment of History we are presently enjoying seems dedicated to the proposition of tangling up Words and Deeds, rather than keeping them tidily separated as two quite distinct types of human performance. Words are seldom just simple words anymore; but rather, as philosophers of language have argued, words seem able to morph into deeds through “speech acts”—to wit: any “utterance that has performative function in language and communication.”

            Hence Hate Speech, to cite an obvious example, has been defined as an act-like event, and, as such, is deemed to fall outside the purview of Constitutionally protected (i.e., normal or) Free Speech. Says the Wiki-world on this question: “Only speech that poses an imminent danger of unlawful action (viz., “These include the lewd and obscene, the profane, the libelous and the insulting or “fighting” words – those which by their very utterances inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace.”), where the speaker has the intention to incite such action and there is the likelihood that this will be the consequence of his or her speech, may be restricted and punished by that law.”

The entanglement between Words and Deeds in public discourse is of relatively recent vintage. The more classical convention is to recognize a clear distinction between these two activities, and perhaps the most famous and obvious instantiation is reflected in Thucydides’ (Greek historian; c. 460 – c. 395 BC) record of Pericles’ funeral oration (History II.41.4), which was delivered in circa 431 BC.

            For a bit of context: remember that the Athenian polis and her allies had protracted a rather lengthy and intervallic war with Sparta and the Peloponnesian League, which lasted from 431 to 404 BC. This means therefore a rather sizable population of dead folks over the duration. Historical evidence indicates that in 5^th century Athens it was the practice to hold public funerals to honor the war dead, with their remains being left for three days in a tent, during which time offerings could be made. Then there was a funeral procession to transport the remains of the dead just outside the walls of the city for public burial in the Kerameikos cemetery, at which time a prominent Athenian citizen would deliver a speech; and on the occasion in 431 BC that interests us, that citizen was Pericles. So goes the bit of the speech concerning Words & Deeds recorded by Thucydides:

Many are the proofs which we [the Athenians] have given of our power and assuredly it does not lack witnesses, and therefore we shall be the wonder not only of the men of to-day but of after times; we shall need no Homer to sing our praise nor any other poet whose verses may perhaps delight for the moment but whose presentation of the facts will be discredited by the truth. Nay, we have compelled every sea and every land to grant access to our daring, and have everywhere planted everlasting memorials both of evil to foes and of good to friends.

In making the poignant assertion that the manifold proofs of Athenian valor and worth, their great deeds and sacrifices in the war, will speak for themselves in gaining renown for Athens, Pericles sets the stage for a rather common Thucydidean dichotomy between deeds and words. In perhaps the most significant distinction between words and deeds, Thucydides clearly states in I.22.1, for example, that speeches or logoi, whose words are "difficult to recall with strict accuracy," "are given in the language in which … the several speakers would express...the sentiments most befitting the occasion, though...I have adhered as closely as possible to the general sense of what was actually said." Hence, his method in recording speeches is not really to record, but to re-compose. Deeds or facts [erga], on the other hand, says Thucydides in I.22.2, "I have thought...to give […], not as ascertained from any chance informant nor as seemed to me probable, but only after investigating with the greatest possible accuracy each detail." This is a distinction that permeates Thucydides’ historical narrative.

      According to Pericles’s argument, then, because the proofs of Athenian power are so manifest in the deeds, which is to say in the monticule of dead Athenian bodies laying before the crowd of mourners, the city shall never be in need, "either of a Homer to spin [the might of Athens] into a tale, or of someone who shall [set about] right away to enhance [the deeds of the Athenians] through poetic verse. For with respect to these deeds, their simple disclosure [truth - aletheia] shall stop every attempt at theorization" (Thucydides, 2 41 4).  

            Now, the syntax of Pericles’s speech at this point clearly articulates a three-fold distinction in the mind of the speaker: because of the various demonstrations of the might of their city, the Athenians had absolutely no need either

of 1) a Homer to spin [the might of Athens] into a rousing tale, (ou¡te ÔOmh/rou e˙paine÷tou), or

of 2) any poet through verse straightaway to delight [us about the deeds of the Athenians] (ou¡te o¢stiß e¶pesi me«n to\ aujti÷ka te÷ryei),

3) Because [d’] the simple reality [hJ aÓlh/qeia] of these deeds shall prevent any questionable speculation [th\n uJpo/noian].(tw◊n d’ e¶rgwn th\n uJpo/noian hJ aÓlh/qeia bla¿ye)

The fundamental oratorical element of Pericles' argument to the Athenians during the Funeral Oration takes the form of a distinction between word and deed; for beckoning with rhetorical flourish toward the monument to the dead, which is in fact the heaping pile of their remains, Pericles speaks out the idea that the deeds of valor and sacrifice that have been accomplished by the Athenians have their own voice and shall speak out for themselves with their own voice.

            The world will hear the echo of these words yet again, some 2300 years later, being carried aloft on the wind of Gettysburg’s desolate and disconsolate battlefield, spoken out in all of their simplicity by Abraham Lincoln:

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate. . .we cannot consecrate. . . we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. 

A seemingly eternal counterpoint between word and deed: our warrior deeds speak eloquently and persuasively for themselves (i.e., reflect the truth of the matter), far beyond the poet’s poor power, so very limited by his words, “to add or detract.” “…We shall need no Homer to sing our praise nor any other poet whose verses may perhaps delight for the moment but whose presentation of the facts will be discredited by the truth [of our deeds].”