12. Description of Mind (Introduction)

The first line of evidence relates to linguistic determinism and the idea that language facilitates our conceptualising capacity. The assumption in cognitive linguistics is that language reflects patterns of thought, and can be seen as a means of encoding and externalising thought. It follows from this view that patterns of meaning in language represent a conventional means (an accepted norm in a given linguistic community) of encoding conceptual structure and organisation for purposes of communication. This is known as the symbolic function of language. It also follows from this view that different ways of expressing or encoding ideas in language represent different patterns of thought, so that encountering different linguistic ‘options’ for encoding ideas can influence the way we reason.

There is a process of “thinking for speaking” in which cognition plays a dynamic role within the framework of linguistic expression. In his (1978)

Slobin has expressed the “thinking of speaking” as follows:

The activity of thinking takes on a particular quality when it is employed in the activity of speaking. In the evanescent time frame of constructing utterances in discourse, one fits one’s thoughts into available linguistic forms. A particular utterance is never a direct reflection of “objective” or perceived reality or of an inevitable and universal mental representation of a situation. This is evident within any given language, because the same situation can be described in different ways; and it is evident across languages, because each language provides a limited set of options for the grammatical encoding of characteristics of objects and events. “Thinking for speaking” involves picking those characteristics that (a) fit some concepttualization of the event, and (b) are readily encodable in the language.

(Slobin 1987: 435)

The online effects of language on thought processes have been noticed by psychologists, although not seen as centrally important to the classical issues of language and cognition.

Language enables us to acquire knowledge of the world and of other people. We learn what people think by what they say, and, in turn, we speak our minds to them. Words give us immediate entry to the minds of others. By writing/using these words I can inform you or amuse you, excite you or insult you. I get straight through to your mind, perhaps uninvited. This is possible because we hear people’s emissions of sound as meaningful speech, and cannot but hear it that way when the words uttered are familiar. In this way, language establishes intimate connections between minds and shows how easily the sanctity of individual minds is violated.

In addition to being an interface between minds, language gives us much of our access to the wider world. Through what we are told and what we read we come to acquire a vast range of world knowledge. Language is our means of learning about science and culture, mathematics and history: information that makes up our much of our vision of the wider world. To gain access to this knowledge we must first have access to language. So what gives us such access? Do we first need to know a language? Is this what equips us to produce and understand utterances?

These questions go to the heart of our ability to make intelligible sense of certain sounds people utter, and to give meaning to the sounds we utter. How are we able to attach linguistic form and significance to certain speech sounds we and other humans produce?

Dummett (1978) frames the philosophical issue as follows:

The central task of the philosopher of language is to explain what meaning is; that is, what makes a language language. Consider two speakers engaged in conversation. To immediate inspection, all that is happening is that sounds of a certain kind issue from the mouths of each alternately. But we know that there is a deeper significance: they are expressing thoughts, putting forward arguments, stating conjectures, asking questions, etc. (Dummett 1978: 96)

A correct view of language, and our knowledge of language, will need to account for our capacity to hear complex meaning in speech sounds and to invest sounds with such meaning; an account that explains our immediate readiness to produce and comprehend utterances of sentences we have never used before. It will also have to explain how, by these means, we succeed in making our minds available to one another. In his (1968) Chomsky asserts that “the person who has acquired knowledge of a language has internalized a system of rules.” Thus, a language is “a ‘habit structure’ or a network of associative connections or that knowledge of language is merely a matter of ‘knowing how’, a skill expressible as a system of disposition to respond” (Chomsky 1968: 22). According to Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (see chapter V at §5.6) that language determines thought, and the structural relations in language “can be studied abstractly” (Chomsky 1968: 18). In short, language is not only a set of possible sentence (E(xternal)-language) but also a set of rules and principles in minds of speakers.