Personal Languages and Meaning as Pointing

Gordon M. Fisher

Abstract. I propose and defend the use of what I call personal

languages, a kind of idiolects, as a basis for a kind of language study. In
particular, I deal with English personal languages. Personal languages are
time-dependent; they change during the lifetimes of people who use them.
The English language communion is composed not of languages, but of
individuals who use English personal languages for communication with
some estimated degree of fluency for some period(s) during their lifetimes.
This communion is therefore also time-dependent. I discuss processes of
language change in this context.

My aim is to supplement synchronic studies, not to displace them.

There are features of personal languages which do not change over relatively
long time periods, and synchronic studies have been and are very useful in
finding and analyzing such enduring features. On the other hand, diachronic
studies based on personal languages are useful in reveal some of the features
of how languages change. I discuss some of the social and political
processes which lead to standardizations of personal languages, so that one
can speak usefully of such things as dialects, or even, with suitable
disclaimers and qualifications, the English language.

I also propose and give examples of how it can be useful to speak in

terms of pointing and pointers rather than meaning and meanings. I quote
and discuss some opinions of well-known linguists which I take to give
some support to my proposals, and in one case I argue against an opinion of
one linguist that language studies cannot be usefully based on idiolects.

1. English as she is spoke. Many people in this world can make use
of sounds as one of their ways of communicating. Some of these people
belong to the English language
communion. They can make some
use of certain English personal
signs (sounds and marks and
English personal languages in
attempts to interact with other
people, or to act within themselves, in order to understand or to be
understood. The number of people in the English language communion
continually changes, as people begin to learn to speak English personal
languages, and as people, for one reason or another, lose ability to use such
languages.

When people communicate in the presence of each other with the help
of sounds, they also use body movements besides those involved in making
or hearing sounds, such as facial expressions, motions of arms and other
body parts, different body positions, and so on. In writing and reading, they
use punctuation, capitalizing, underlining, different type faces, and so on, in
addition to alphabets and other character systems. Sounds used in speaking
and hearing languages, numerous kinds of body movements of people, and
certain arrangements of recordable characters are all kinds of signs, or parts
of signs.

English personal languages are a kind of time-dependent English

idiolects. In particular, at any one time each person in the English language
communion has the ability to use certain sounds as an aid in communicating.
Each such linguistic sound is a class of physical sounds, called a phoneme.
At different times, a person will customarily use different physical sounds
from a particular phoneme, and at any one time, different persons in the
English language communion will customarily use different sounds from a
particular phoneme. Sometimes a person will customarily use one phoneme
where another person customarily uses a different phoneme. There are
relations between phonemes, so that often enough one person will be able to
translate between such phonemes. This happens when people speak English
personal languages to each other which belong to different dialects.
However, sometimes translations will be incorrect, which may make
communication difficult or fail.

The English personal languages usable by a single person change in

time. If it seems to you unlikely that your English personal language now is
in some ways different from the one you were able to use a few minutes
before now, I propose you don’t think of your
English personal languages as changing from
instant to instant, but rather from time to time,
where the implied period between these two
times varies according to circumstances. For
example, think of the English you had an ability
to use when you were five years old, the English you might have been able
to use when you were half your present age, and the English you can use
right now. You have added words to your vocabulary, and no doubt
subtracted a few. You have become able to use and interpret combinations
of words you hadn’t been able to use and interpret before. You use and
interpret many more kinds of gestures associated with speech, and have
abandoned some. Maybe you’ve moved from somewhere in the USA or
Canada to somewhere in England or New Zealand, and have learned to
handle different dialects.

Saying that a person uses different English personal languages

differently at different times is close to (though not really the same as)
saying that the person uses different Englishes at different times. I’ve been
using my own Englishes throughout this essay. One way the English I was
using to start with is different from the one I’m now using is that I have used
the phrase ‘English personal languages’ in ways I never had before I started
on this essay.

2. What did you say? In infancy, a person most often has abilities to
imitate, remember and create personal sounds. As a person grows up, some
members of the English language communion implant sounds in the person
which are imitations of English personal sounds spoken by the members.
These include sequences of ranges of certain basic sounds, used with various
intonations and stresses, and accompanied with various kinds of body
movements. The transmission and reception of such sounds are the subject
of phonology and phonetics. These sounds are presented according to
certain orders, their syntax. A child who is implanted from infancy with
sounds from more than one language communion may acquire from
members of different language communions the ability to use more than one
kind of personal sounds.

As members of the English language communion implant and confirm

orderings of sounds and accompanying movements for a child, they also
implant, by means of various kinds of interactions with the child, English
personal linguistic pointers which are linked to English personal linguistic
sounds and body movements. These serve to link ordered sound
sequences to parts of the external and internal environments of a child.
What the links point to are things. I use the word ‘thing’ in a broad sense to
include whatever a person may intend to point to or judges may be pointed
to. This includes such things as the present king of France, Sir Walter Scott,
Sherlock Holmes, ‘carbon dioxide’, ‘rocks’, ‘all the insects in the world’,
‘everything’, ‘something’, ‘nothing’, ‘things’, ‘parts of things’, ‘the cat on
the mat’, ‘the cat is on the mat’, ‘who knows what?’, and so on and on.

As a person grows up, other such pointers are implanted in and

created by a person as a result of interactions and introspections the person
undergoes and participates in. Some links are abandoned, and some are
forgotten, but many are extended or otherwise
modified. Linguistic pointers are tools which people
use to refer or to be referred to when they communicate
using sounds they make and hear in certain ways, or by
using marks represented such. I will call English
personal linguistic sounds and body movements linked by English personal
linguistic pointers to things English personal linguistic forms.

3. Sapir on meanings as pointers and on visual images. Edward

Sapir wrote:1

However, a speech-sound localized in the brain, even when associated

with the particular movements of the “speech organs” that are required to
produce it, is very far from being an element of language. It must be further
associated with some element or group of elements of experience, say a visual
image or a class of visual images or a feeling of relation, before it has even
rudimentary linguistic significance. This “element” of experience is the content
or “meaning” of the linguistic unit; the associated auditory, motor, and other
cerebral processes that lie immediately back of the act of hearing speech are
merely a complicated symbol of or signal for those “meanings,” of which more
anon.

Along with personal meanings, people use other pointers, such as

body movements – extending forefingers, waving arms, nodding or shaking
heads, signing, and so on. Sapir wrote (p. 8):

The word “house” is not a linguistic fact if by it is meant merely the

acoustic effect produced on the ear by its constituent consonants and vowels,
pronounced in a certain order; nor the motor processes and tactile feelings which
make up the articulation of the word; nor the visual perception on the part of the
hearer of this articulation; nor the visual perception of the word “house” on the
written page; nor the motor processes and tactile feelings which enter into the
1
Edward Sapre, Language, An Introduction to the Study of Speech, Harcourt, Brace, 1921, p. 7-8
 writing of the word; nor the memory of any or all of these experiences. It is only
when these, and possibly still other, associated experiences are automatically
associated with the image of a house that they begin to take on the nature of a
symbol, a word, and element of language. . . . . . The association must be a purely
symbolic one; in other words, the word must denote, tag off, the image, must have
no other significance than to serve as a counter to refer to it whenever it is
necessary or convenient to do so. Such an association, voluntary and, in a sense,
arbitrary as it is, demands a considerable exercise of self-conscious attention. At
least to begin with, for habit soon makes the association nearly as automatic as
any and more rapid than most.

Using my terms, I take it that Sapir stated here that he thought

meanings are something like my pointers. He concentrates on the use of
meanings to point to visual images. As I see it, a visual image can be either
what a person receives and processes using his or her eyes and brain when
looking outward, a perceived visual image, or what a person may receive
and process when looking inward, an imagined visual image.

4. Powers that be. As members of a language communion use their

personal languages to communicate with other members of that communion,
they imitate each other, consciously and unconsciously, in such ways that
personal languages of various overlapping groups of people within the
communion come more and more to resemble each other, at least as least as
they are used in some contexts. Powerful forces acting to standardize
personal languages are exerted during formal schooling of people, including
religious instruction. This is an important part of the integration of people
into various groups within societies to which members of language
communions belong. Contrariwise, some groups have members with
political power who arrange, or acquiesce to, policies which ensure that
members of other groups receive inferior schooling.

Various political factors and policies also tend to equilibrate personal

languages. For example, nations often declare some particular language
communion to be the one and only national language. Immigrants into a
nation who are not members of the national language communion for that
nation, and who want to become citizens, may be expected or required to
have or attain sufficient competency to communicate with other members of
the national language communion with some degree of fluency, at least in
certain contexts. Such policies get tangled up with such matters as ethnic
differences and antipathies. This leads to people opposing bilingual
education during schooling of children, when they can most easily learn
languages. A less political reason for opposition to such education might be
that some people may feel uncomfortable having around them children who
will be able to be more fluent than they are in using personal languages of a
national language communion.

A book by Bahavna Dave gives a very detailed study of matters

concerning national languages which took place in Kazakhstan before and
after it declared its independence from Soviet Russia late in 1991. Dave
writes:

It was only towards the very end of the glasnost era, when cracks in the
socialist system were surfacing, that the Kazakh Communist Party leaders and
prominent cultural and literary figures began expressing their alarm over the
erosion of the native [Kazakh, Turkish-like] language among the youth and
urbanized strata. Soon following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the former
communist elites and intelligentsia openly lamented that the young Kazakhs were
turning into mankurts, a term coined by the Kyrgyz writer Chingiz Aitmatov to
denote the loss of linguistic and cultural identity among the Russified strata of
non-Russian nationalities. However, mankurtism came to be seen as a stigma and
a limitation only when the dissolution of the Soviet state suddenly ruptured the
hegemony of Russian and spurred the top-down campaign to elevate Kazakh as
the state language. The fact that the state-sponsored campaign to regenerate
Kazakh and turn it into the sole state language did not acquire a decisive anti-
Russian character shows the extent to which Russian had gained a natural
acceptance among the Kazakhs. The various government bodies, organizations
such as Qazaq tili, and other vigilante groups, zealously made efforts to
regenerate Kazakh and to enshrine it as the sole state language in a context where
Russian was the pervasive lingua franca. The Kazakh language proponents
expediently argued that the loss of the native language, or mankurtizatsiia, of their
brethren was reversible. The Kazakh language came to be seen as a powerful
symbolic resource because only one in a hundred Slavs could claim any
proficiency. If the lack of proficiency in Kazakh among the Slavs testified to a
profound limitation of the Kazakh language during Soviet rule, Kazakh language
proficiency became a vital symbolic asset in the post-Soviet period.2

In 1989, before independence, the government of Kazakhstan enacted

a ‘Law of Languages’ which declared Kazakh language to be the national
language of Kazakhstan, and Russian language to be the lingua franca of
Kazakhstan, the language of “inter-ethnic communication”. In 1993, after
independence, this declaration was reaffirmed in the first post-Soviet
constitution of Kazakhstan. During years of debate about language issues
2
Bhavna Dave, Kazakhstan: Ethnicity, Language and Power (2007), p. 3.
among members of various groups, some people had argued for both Kazakh
and Russian be declared to be official national languages. But this official
recognition of national bilingualism was not realized. Russian is still much
used in Kazakhstan in some contexts.

In the book, in discussing these matters, the author says in passing that
“A lingua franca is a language used in communication between different
groups, and not different individuals per se.”3 According to the viewpoints I
am promoting here, I would put what I take to be his point this way: A
lingua franca is a language which consists of personal languages of members
of some language communion, and which is commonly used for
communication between members of certain social groups in certain
contexts, although members of these and other groups may not customarily
make use of the lingua franca in other contexts.

5. Just between us. A particular linguistic form may be used to point

in many different ways,
depending on how its
sounds are delivered and
interpreted. It is difficult
to properly transcribe
into writing a lot of the
different ways a
particular linguistic form
may be used to point
with. Rough attempts
are made using variations
of type faces and certain
kinds of punctuation, and
by using artificially constructed phonetic alphabets. The collection of the
English personal forms an individual could make use of at any one time is
the individual’s English personal language at that time.

A person in the English language communion customarily finds that

he or she can communicate with some other people by using as a tool his or
her English personal languages. That is, the person learns to exchange
pointers with other people in the communion. The use of personal languages
accompanied with body motions is not the only way persons exchange
3
Loc. cit., p. 101.
pointers. Communication involving use of personal languages involves in
part processes in which a person uses English personal linguistic forms to
activate or to try to activate corresponding English personal linguistic forms
in some other person or persons. Production and reception of such forms
depend on personal contexts, which vary from time to time, and from person
to person. For a particular person, personal contexts arise from effects on
the person of location in space and time, on environmental conditions where
and when the person is, on physiological conditions of the person at different
times, on how the person’s nervous systems are functioning, on effects on
the person of other persons around the person, and so on.

One way for a person to attempt communication using English

personal languages is for the person, as communicator, to produce English
linguistic forms in his or her personal contexts, intending that one or more
other persons, communicants, will consequently produce English personal
linguistic forms of their own which resemble the ones used by the
communicator, and perhaps intending that persons to whom they are directed
will react in some particular way. One kind of reaction commonly expected
is that a communicant will become a second communicator and produce
English personal linguistic forms of his or her own, which in turn produce in
the first communicator forms similar to those of the second communicator,
and also some reaction in the first communicator. Iteration of such processes
constitute a dialogue, a kind of discourse.

In short, as a person grows up, his or her personal languages are

modified, extended and regulated by interactions with parts of the world and
people in it, and by interactions within the person. As time goes on, new
linguistic forms are implanted in the person, and also created by the person.
These interactions create a temporal sequence of personal languages for each
able person. Each person who participates in a language communion, be it
English or not, does so because he or she has available changing abilities to
produce and understand certain sequences of sounds and attached pointers
with which he or she is able to use as tools in communication. Many people
are also able to associate these sounds and pointers with certain marks with
which they can also communicate by writing and reading.

In what follows, I will most often abbreviate, and speak of English

languages or the English language, or in some contexts, just English. I will
refer to people in the English language communion as speaking and
understanding English, and as writing and reading English.
 I will assume that someone becomes a member of the English
language communion when the person is able to use a single English
personal linguistic form for purposes of communication. For example, a
baby whose first such form is the sound “No”, uttered when expressing
rejection or disapproval, becomes thereby a member of the communion. A
person who belongs to some other language communion enters the English
language in the same way, at any age. Naturally, communication is more
extensive and variegated as a person learns to use and creates more linguistic
forms. For some purposes it is desirable to somehow estimate degrees of
ability to communicate using a personal language, if only by using some
such modifiers as “fluently”, “quite well”, “haltingly”, “not very well”,
“well enough only in some contexts”, “not fluent”, etc. These terms point to
degrees of competency.

With such a criterion for membership in a language, most people will

belong to a number of different language communions, since most people
will know at least one word from communions in which they are not fluent
or only slightly fluent. Thus language communions overlap. That is, a
person customarily belongs to a number of different language communions.
If one wants to assign numerical values to degrees of language fluency, this
can be done in various ways. For example, one could administer fluency
tests based on samples of personal languages as used by members of a
number of various language communions, and subject the results to various
kinds of statistical analysis which would yield numerical degrees of
competency from 0 to 100. Depending on circumstances, this might or
might not be more useful than making comparisons using qualitative or
vague modifiers.

6. The more things change? There was presumably a time when no

one spoke English, and it looks like there will be a time in the future when
no one on earth will speak English. However, I will assume that in what
follows that I am dealing with periods of time during which the term
‘English’ is used (in English) to refer to what I have called English personal
languages which are used as aids in communication by people while they are
members of what I have called the English language communion.

The linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) introduced the

notions of diachronicity and synchronicity into language studies.
Diachronic studies are concerned with how certain abstractions called
langues by Saussure change as time goes on. Synchronic studies are
concerned with properties of these langues when such changes are ignored.

The linguist J. R. Firth (1890-1960) spoke of de Saussure’s viewpoint

this way4:

“De Saussure’s general linguistics is closely linked with the sociology of

Durkheim. . . . De Saussure, thinking in Durkheimian terms, regarded social
facts as sui generis and external to and on a different plane from individual
phenomena. The ‘collective conscious’, though perhaps a psychical entity, is not
arrived at by studying the psychology of the individual. The social fact is on a
different plane of reality. The group constrains the individual, and the group
culture determines a great deal of his humanity.

“Consequently de Saussure in terms of his linguistics could only refer to

my personal linguistic activity, writing or reading this paper, as emanating from
un sujet parlant. . . . Our linguistic behaviour as sujets parlants he would
classify as ‘parole’ – the activities of ‘sujets parlant’.

“But la langue, une langue, any socially established language, is a

function of ‘la masse parlante’. . . .

“Now if from [the] generality he calls ‘langage’ in any community we

subtract all the individual items of speech, all speech-sounds on the air, and all
spelling marks on vast masses of paper – that is, if from ‘langage’ in general we
take away all the overt individual acts of the language of any given community,
we have the all-important residue, the language of the community, . . . stored and
residing in the conscience collective – a silent, highly organized system of signs
existing apart from and over and above the individual as sujet parlant. Langage
minus parole gives you langue . . . which is the real purpose and object of
linguistics synchronic and diachronic, i.e. descriptive and historical.

“Such a language in the Saussurean sense is a system of signs placed in

categories. . . . Actual people do not talk such ‘a language’.” (p. 179-180)

My English personal languages may be viewed as a variety of

Saussurean paroles, as described by Firth. But I am not making use of an
abstraction like Saussurean langues. I am instead taking “English language”
to be a function of time, consisting of all the English personal languages of
all the members of a social collective I call the “English language
communion”, which is itself a function of time, inasmuch as its population
4
John Rupert Firth, “Personality and Language in Society”, The Sociological Review, xliii, 2, 1950. In J.
R. Firth, Papers in Linguistics, 1934-1951, Oxford UP, 1957, p. 177-189.
changes as members enter and leave the communion. There was a time for
this communion to be born, and there will be a time for it to die.

This is not to say that no one has profitably proceeded in language

studies as if during some time period there is such a thing as an unchanging
English language common to some or all of the members of the English
language communion during that period. People can concentrate on what
they take to be unchanging in all English personal languages over some time
period. For two or three millennia or so, such attitudes have facilitated
finding and teaching enduring properties of personal English languages. A
linguist may proceed by abstracting synchronic languages which the
researcher bases on usages of personal languages made during some time
period, which the researcher takes to be representative of this period. For
purposes of historical linguistics, a linguist may proceed by abstracting
sequences of synchronic languages made during sequences of time periods.

7. Putting together and taking apart. Here are some remarks made
by the linguist Roy Harris (1931- ) on his website5, interspersed with
comparisons of his views with mine (I have added numbers to his
paragraphs:

(1) Communication . . . is not a closed process of automatic

'transmission' of given signs or messages from one person's mind to another's, but
of setting up conditions which allow all parties involved the free construction of
possible interpretations, depending on the context. These contextual possibilities
are intrinsically ongoing and open-ended. . . . This open-endedness outstrips and
defies any 'rules' or 'codes' that participants may think can be imposed, either in
advance or retrospectively. . . . . .

Note: In my view, different communicants may and often do interpret

what a communicator speaks or writes and different communicators speak
and write in different ways at different times and in different contexts. But
still, unimpaired communicants will interpret and communicators formulate
subject to certain constraints, such as for example previous usages of
linguistic forms formed as they go along in life. Such usages may and often
do change as time passes, and may be and often are different in different
contexts, but some such previous usages are always present in an unimpaired
member of a language communion. This is not to say that a person never
interprets or formulates in ways or with results different from any used by
5
http://www.royharrisonline.com/integrationism.html
the person previously, nor is it to say that a person is somehow necessarily
interpreting and formulating by making use of a fixed code and rules for
using such a code which have somehow been implanted or inborn (or both)
in the person. Still, each person in a language communion has at any time a
personal language which the person may use to communicate with other
members of the communion, albeit the personal language the person has will
differ at different times and will be used differently in different contexts.

(2) One reason for this indeterminacy is that all communication is time-
bound. Its basic temporal function is to integrate our present experience both with
our past experience and with anticipated future experience. . . . In a timeless
world, that temporal integration would not be possible: there could be no signs
and no language. So the first precondition for any society that depends on
semiological proficiency (operating with signs) is that the participant members
must be creatures capable of grasping that integrational process and its temporal
implementation. . . . . .

Note: Clearly I agree with this assessment of the importance of taking

time into consideration when studying the nature of languages. I am
developing in this work an approach to studying English based on time-
dependent and context-dependent idiolects which I call English personal
languages. However, as I explained above, I don’t propose that one should
give up studies of time-independent linguistic structures. Some features of
personal languages change in time, but some of their features stay the same
for long periods, or never change. From my point of view, these latter
features are mathematical in nature, and are to interpersonal communication
as the conic sections of a geometer are to the orbits of an astronomer or
astronaut.

(3) Recognition of this fundamental integrational function provides a

basis for comparing and analysing all communication systems, both linguistic and
non-linguistic. Such an analysis stands in marked contrast to traditional
semiology, where the reigning assumption is that there must already exist
established systems of signs (e.g. languages), without which communication
would be doomed to failure. Thus integrationism (as opposed to 'segregationism',
i.e. any approach which assumes that systems of communication are independent
of their potential users or of the contexts in which they can operate) denies the
existence of context-free signs. Signs, including linguistic signs, are products of
the communicational process, not its prerequisites. . . . . .

Note: My viewpoint is definitely not a form of segregationism as

described above by Harris. I’m not sure if my viewpoint is some sort of
integrationism or not. I‘m certainly describing a way to approach
communication processes making use of linguistic signs which always
depend on contexts and change in time, along with the user. As to linguistic
signs being products rather than prerequisites of communicational processes,
I would rather say that some linguistic signs are products of members of a
language communion, but some of them are prerequisites for a baby to start
becoming a member of a language communion.

(4) Integrationist theory recognizes three parameters relevant to the

identification of signs within the temporal continuum. These are (i)
biomechanical, (ii) macrosocial, and (iii) circumstantial. The first of these relates
to the physical and mental capacities of the individual participants. The second
relates to practices established in the community or some group within the
community. The third relates to the specific conditions obtaining in a particular
communication situation. . . . . .

Note: This sounds good to me, although I’m not sure that these three
are all the parameters one would like to have.

(5) By contrast, segregational approaches treat communication as a

process by which two individuals, A and B, both already knowing a particular
system of signs, choose signs from this given system in order to pass messages to
each other. Accordingly, communication can only break down if A or B
misapplies the system they are both deemed to be using. But the system itself is,
ex hypothesi, adequate for 'conveying' the messages required. It allegedly stands,
epistemologically, 'above' and 'beyond' its users and their individual
circumstances. In this respect, orthodox theory implicitly treats communication
systems as being analogous to institutionalized games, which cannot be played
properly unless the individual players not only understand and master but
consciously abide by the institutionalized rules. . . . . .

Note: People can learn to communicate with the aid of certain sounds
starting from infancy and live four score and ten years doing so without ever
knowing grammatical rules, unless ‘knowing’ is interpreted as being able to
exercise such rules because people somehow possess them without being
conscious of them. Someone else, such as a linguist, may extract
grammatical rules from what an illiterate person says, but the linguist need
not be able to do so because these grammatical rules are somehow in the
person. The rules are in the linguist, and the linguist is able to communicate
them using linguistic signs. It may or may not be the case that nervous
systems of unimpaired persons are so constituted that linguists might be able
to formulate universal grammatical rules based on the speech of a number of
members of a number of language communions, rules which the linguist
believes are followed in the speech of any member of any language
communion whatever, at any time and in any context. The rules would
constitute the basis for a kind of universal grammar. This would indicate
that there are physiological limitations to the kinds of grammatical rules
which a person can follow. But this is not to say that if such rules can be
found, one must conclude that these rules are in a language user, nor is a
fixed and person-independent language present in a language user.

(6) Integrationism questions this rule-based 'games' approach to human

communication, regarding it as an attempt to impose a pre-determined static
model on an essentially dynamic and creative process. Only by rejecting static
models does it become possible to explain linguistic change or the development in
human history of quite novel forms of communication, such as writing or
television, that are semiologically unique and unprecedented, but nevertheless
rooted in the biomechanical, macrosocial and circumstantial conditions obtaining
at a particular time and place. . . . . .

Note: I am working on dynamic models, but I am not rejecting static

models, as I have explained above.

(7) The integrationist approach to language rejects the 'language myth'

that has dominated Western thinking on the subject for centuries past. This myth
continues to dominate modern linguistics, whose orthodox exponents postulate
idealized linguistic communities bound together by shared systems of known
rules and meanings. The integrationist agenda offers the prospect of an
alternative: a demythologized linguistics which corresponds more realistically to
our day-to-day communicational experience. High on this alternative agenda are
the demythologization of the concept 'language', the demythologization of the
connexions between speech and writing, and the demythologization of the
linguistic relationships between individual and society.

Note: Maybe I am being some sort of integrationist here, albeit one

who seeks to retain, not abandon, much work of segregationists.

(8) Please refer to the book Introduction to Integrational Linguistics by

Roy Harris for further discussion of Integrationism and its role in redefining
communication.

Note: This brings up a disagreement I have with Prof. Harris. In his

book referred to here, he argues against founding linguistic studies on
idiolects, which I suppose includes what I call personal languages. In the
book he refers to here he says 6:

6
Roy Harris, Introduction to Integrational Linguistics, Elsevier, 1998. p. 48-49.
 Segregationists . . . relocate the fixed code at a lower level still, and
identify the ‘idiolect’ of each individual speaker as their object of description (and
the ultimate ‘system’ on which linguistic communication is based). Exactly how
the idiolect is to be defined is a matter of controversy among segregationists, but a
more important point for our present purposes is that, however it is defined, the
identification of the ‘system’ with the individual resurrects the problem of
explaining how A communicates with B if each is using ex hypothesi a different
code.

Note: I have not by hypothesis or otherwise assumed a fixed code or

‘system’ on which individuals base their personal languages. I have instead
hypothesized that individuals base their personal languages to start with on
personal languages they hear from people around them, notably in many
cases on those of their parents (‘mother tongue’). Later many individuals
base their personal languages to some degree on ‘systems’ of grammar
taught to them in schools, but I hypothesize such grammars are in turn
ultimately based on personal languages of numerous people. Grammarians
and language teachers have been supplemented by linguists who have
constructed more elaborate ‘systems’ of various kinds. Even people who
receive little or no formal language instruction continually change their
personal languages as they communicate with other people during their
lives, especially some people which individuals take to be authoritative, such
as religious counselors, good story-tellers or people with some sort of power
over them such as good friends, etc. Harris says:

. . . . . the very notion of an idiolect seems to imply that the individual

constantly speaks in a characteristic or uniform way. That this is far from being
the case is suggested by studies documenting the phenomenon called
‘accommodation’, whereby speakers consciously or unconsciously adapt the way
they speak towards that of their interlocutors . . . . .

Note: I don’t know why Harris thinks that the notion of idiolect
seems to imply some sort of uniformity, presumably analogous to a fixed
code. However, I note that the reason Harris gives for rejecting such
uniformity can be used by me to support my view that individuals keep
changing their personal languages.

Harris wrote:

It is also worth noting here that the point at which the theoretical concept
of the idiolect is introduced is also the point at which synchronic and diachronic
linguistics ultimately part company. In other words, while it makes some kind of
 sense to say that languages or dialects can be passed on from one generation of
speakers to the next, this makes no sense at4 all in the case of idiolects, since by
definition the idiolect belongs to one individual only. It dies with that person.

It seems that here Harris is taking idiolects to be some sort of private

languages of the sort Ludwig Wittgenstein discussed. I wonder if idiolects
as Harris describes them here amount to personal fixed codes of some kind?
In any case, I have tried to make it clear that I don’t think of my personal
languages as being private in Wittgenstein’s sense. On the contrary, my
personal languages are formed to start with as a result of social interactions
with other people. A child from early on interacts with other people in ways
that constitute a passing on of features of the child’s personal languages to
other people, and these kinds of interactions normally continue throughout
the life of the child.

8. More taking apart. People have proposed many ways to

decompose English personal linguistic forms into categories which can be
applied to all the personal Englishes, such as:

Sounds and sequences of sounds with pointers: phonemes,

morphemes, words, phrases, clauses, sentences, statements,
utterances

Parts of speech: nouns, pronouns, adjectives, determiners,

verbs, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, interjections
Sentence divisions: subject - predicate, noun phrases – verb
phrases, clauses

Performatives: propositions, questions, requests, commands, warnings

Literary categories: essays, books, poems, dialogues, monologues,

discourses, speeches, plays, cinemas

From a 21st century elementary textbook7:

Many people think of English grammar in terms of traditional

rules, such as Never split an infinitive; Never end a sentence with a
7
Gerald Nelson, English: An Essential Grammar, Routledge, 2001, p. 1-2.
 preposition. Specifically, these are prescriptive rules. They tell us nothing
about how English is really used in everyday life. In fact, native speakers
of English regularly split infinitives (to actually consider) and sentences
often end with a preposition (Dr Brown is the man I’ll vote for.).

Prescriptive grammar reached its peak in the nineteenth century. In

the twenty-first century, grammarians adopt a more descriptive approach.
In the descriptive approach, the rules of grammar – the ones that concern
us in this book – are the rules that we obey every time we speak, even if
we are completely unaware of what they are. For instance, when we say
John has been ill, we obey many grammar rules, including rules about:

1 Where to place the subject John – before the verb

2 Subject–verb agreement – John has, not John have
3 Verb forms – been, not being

These are descriptive rules. The task of the modern grammarian is to

discover and then to describe the rules by which a language actually works.

Confirmation from a 19th century schoolbook8 :

9. What does it all point to? In Sections 2 and 3, I spoke of

members of the English language communion as able to form and use
English personal linguistic forms consisting of English personal linguistic
sounds, marks, and pointers. These pointers can be used by communicators
in attempts to transfer intentions to communicants.
8
Lindsey Murray, English Grammar, with an appendix containing rules and observations for assisting the
more advanced students to write with perspicuity and accuracy, 58th edition, 1867, p. 13.
 For example, I have on my desk at the moment a written
communication purportedly sent to me from the president of a certain
university. It is addressed to me using a variant of my given name (intended
to point to me), a number assigned to a certain residence and the name of a
certain street (intended to point to a place in which I customarily dwell). the
name of a certain geographical location (intended to point to a location at
which my dwelling can be found), and certain numbers which postal
authorities have assigned to a delivery place for items sent to that location
(intended to point to a location of a postal facility to which the letter will be
sent for delivery).

The envelope contains two printed cards and a form letter. On one of
the cards, there is the following sentence: “The President’s Council is an
annual giving society that recognizes [a university name followed by a
possessive morpheme “’s”] most generous annual donors.” This linguistic
form, no doubt constructed by a person or persons other than the President,
is intended to point to several things: (i) to a certain group within the
university which solicits donations of money on behalf of the university; (ii)
to warm and gratifying feelings I would have if I made a donation, since I
would be ‘giving’, ‘recognized’, and ‘most generous’; (iii) to my planning to
make a donation every year.

This sentence can be decomposed into separated linguistic forms

which act as pointers on their own. For example, the phrase “The
President’s Council” points to the group soliciting donations. Within that
phrase, the word “Council” points to a kind of group which recommends
things, the word “President” points to a person at the top of an
administrative hierarchy, the morpheme “ ’s “ points to something that
belongs to the President, the phrase “President’s Council” points to an
advisory group within an administrative hierarchy, the word “The” points to
the President’s uniqueness, the capital “T” in “The” points to the beginning
of a sentence, the capitals “P” and “C” in “President’s Council” perhaps
point to an official name for a group, the spaces within the sentence point to
how certain forms, the words of the sentence, have been separated within the
written sentence, and the period points to the end of the sentence. When the
sentences are spoken, these separations would not be so clearly indicated,
and some processing of what would be said and heard would have to be
made during communication which would act the way the spaces between
word do.
 I made this analysis during a short time period, using my English
personal linguistic forms in order to communicate with myself, and perhaps
to prepare for attempts to communicate with others. I expect that anyone
else who might make a parallel analysis with his or her own personal
linguistic forms would not make an identical analysis. However, I expect
that another person’s analysis would have connections to mine, which could
be exposed using some linguistic pointers.

I am tempted to go on to analyze other parts of the sentence, and then

to use the idea of linguistic pointers to connect pointings of parts of the
sentence to the pointing furnished by the sentence as a whole. However, I
will be content here to put this aside, and move on to a discussion of how I
am using such terms as “pointers” and “points to” in this essay.

10. What does it all mean? I have used the terms “mean(s)” and
“meaning(s)” sparingly up to now. When I think about what meaning is or
meanings are, or what it means to “mean”, I soon find myself up to my chin
in speculations of all sorts of different kinds of specialists. For example,
here is the full title of a work by linguist Charles Kay Ogden (1889-1957)
and literary critic Ivor Armstrong Richards (1893-1979):

The Meaning of Meaning, A Study of the Influence of Language upon

Thought and of the Science of Symbolism.

This book had its first edition in 1923, its last revised edition in 1936, its 10th
edition in 1952 (my copy) with supplementary essays by anthropologist
Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942) and psychiatrist Francis Graham
Crookshank (1873-1933), and a reprint paperback edition in 1989 with a
new preface by medievalist, semiotician, philosopher, literary critic and
novelist Umberto Eco (b. 1932).

Already in the title we have the implication that there is something

people have called “thought” which is not the same as “language”, although
the latter influences the former. We seem to be asked to take it to start with
that our “thinking” always comes first and “using language” secondarily
affects our “thoughts”. This suggests that what language is, or languages
are, are tools useful for transmitting, receiving, and otherwise dealing with a
kind of private activity people have whose results they make or try to make
public with the aid of speaking, listening, writing, and reading. The title
suggests that this may be done because using language amounts to
conveying something called “meanings”: languages are meaning-carriers.

Such hypotheses are ancient in origin, numerous other conflicting

hypotheses have been offered for several millennia, many of the
hypothesizers have been dismayed at the difficulties which arise when they
worked with any of these hypotheses, some specialists have spent much time
developing theories about language use on the basis of such hypotheses, and
also much time falsifying or casting doubt on theories developed by other
specialists based on conflicting hypotheses.

I submit that one can talk about uses of languages using forms of
“pointing” for forms of “meaning”. I hypothesize that in many contexts, the
substitutes will convey much the same information as the originals, and
often without being much concerned with what leads up to such pointing or
intent to point, such as what goes on people’s minds or brains. One can
speak of speaking as a kind of pointing, of listening as a kind of being
pointed at, of replying as a kind of reciprocal pointing, and so on.

Here’s an example. Words and idiomatic phrases have definitions

listed in dictionaries. Here is one from a Merriam-Webster dictionary of
American English (copyright 2000) in which I have in brackets substituted
forms of “pointing” for forms of “meaning”:

Main Entry: meaning [ pointing]

Function: noun
Inflected Form: -s

1 a : the thing one intends to convey by an act or especially by language :

PURPORT ( do not mistake my meaning [point] ) b : the thing that is conveyed or
signified especially by language : the sense in which something (as a statement) is
understood : IMPORT (what is its meaning [point] to you?) [what do you think its
point is?]
2 : the thing that is meant [pointed to] or intended : INTENT, PURPOSE, AIM,
OBJECT ( a mischievous meaning [point, aim, intent] was apparent )
3 : SIGNIFICANCE ( a look full of meaning [a very pointed look] )
4 : meaning [pointing] in intension : the logical connotation of a word or phrase :
the intension of a term : what a correct definition exhibits; meaning [pointing] in
extension : the logical denotation or extension of a term : the thing or class named
by a word or substantive phrase.