65 Speaking the language

The subject of this essay is the dialectic between word and thought. Between the word and the thought there is therefore no priority of one over the other, but mutual presupposition and a perpetual overlapping: it is at this level that the link between word and thought is actually affected by creativity. Between thought and word there has always implicitly been an original complicity that makes it impossible to separate the two dimensions, thought and expression. Therefore language appears as an inner dimension that is incarnated in expression giving shape to the unrepresentable; it is not merely a sum of positive elements added to each other, but a series of diachronic relations; the linguistic sign cannot be seen as having one definite, univocal meaning, but it is in the gaps and in the opposition between signs that all language becomes meaningful. Language is a constant work-in-progress, which cannot be schematised and viewed in static form. It is an equilibrium in incessant movement between signs and signs, living and dynamic, and is continually being renewed. It is about what is said: talking does not finish in what is said, but in what is said the talking is captured and held. As far as language is concerned, if it is the relation between signs that gives each sign meaning, then meaning arises from their overlapping as well as from the gaps between words; meaning lies in the verbal chain since it stands against other signs; its sense is an integral part of language; words always operate on a background of words, and it is never anything but a fold in the vast fabric of speaking. In the light of contemporary philosophical thinking, language is to be seen as a set of margins between signs and meanings, in a process of continual revelation, in a transformation of contents that generate other contents. The assumption is that in language there is something problematic, the coexistence of the logical level with the pragmatic one, in a continuous movement that cannot be stopped in signs. In this sense, it is right to call it the unsayable, the ungraspable. Language lives precisely due to and on this constant aspiration to say the unsayable, to take into oneself the ungraspable. 66 Le présent essai a pour thème la dialectique entre parole et pensée. Aucune priorité de l'une sur l'autre, mais une présupposition réciproque et une perpétuelle invasion: c'est à ce niveau que la créativité traverse le lien qui les unit. Entre parole et pensée existe, depuis toujours, une complicité originelle rendant impossible la séparation entre pensée et expression. Les arguments s'intéressent au parler, c'est-à-dire au fait de s'exprimer; le langage est considéré comme activité propre à l'homme; l'expression, mise en acte par l'homme, consiste à donner forme et présence au réel et à l'irréel. Le langage est thématisé comme une intériorité qui s'incarne dans l'expression, donnant forme au non représentable qui, loin d'être une simple somme d'éléments positifs ajoutés les uns aux autres, consiste dans une série de rapports diacritiques, le signe linguistique ne peut être pensé comme ayant un signifié défini et univoque, mais se trouve plutôt dans ces écarts et ces oppositions entre les signes que le langage rend signifiants. La réflexion philosophique contemporaine propose le langage comme un ensemble d'écarts entre signes et significations, dans un processus de révélations continuelles, dans une transformation des contenus qui produisent d'autres contenus. On part du principe que le langage contient quelque chose de problématique, la coexistence du niveau logique et de celui pragmatique, dans un mouvement continu qui ne peut s'arrêter aux signes: dans ce sens, il s'agit, à proprement parler, de l'indicible, l'ineffable. C'est justement par et de cette constante aspiration dire l'indicible, à assimiler en soi l'ineffable, que vit le langage. La tematica del presente saggio è la dialettica tra parola e pensiero. Non c’è priorità dell’uno sull’altra, ma reciproca presupposizione e perpetuo sconfinamento: è a questo livello che il nesso parola/pensiero è effettivamente attraversato dalla creatività. Tra pensiero e parola è da sempre implicita una complicità originaria che rende impossibile una separazione delle due dimensioni, quella del pensiero e quella dell’espressione. Si argomenta intorno al parlare che è un esprimere, il linguaggio è considerato come un’attività dell’uomo, l’esprimere attuato dall’uomo consiste nel dare presenza e figura al reale e all’irreale. Il linguaggio è tematizzato come una interiorità che si presentifica nell’espressione dando forma all’irrapresentabile, esso non è una semplice somma di elementi positivi che si aggiungono l’uno all’altro, ma una serie di rapporti diacritici, il segno linguistico non può essere pensato come avente un significato definito e univoco, ma è piuttosto negli scarti e nella opposizioni tra i segni che il linguaggio tutto si fa significante. La riflessione filosofica contemporanea propone il linguaggio come insieme di scarti tra segni e significazioni, in un processo di svelamento continuo, in una trasformazione di contenuti che generano altri contenuti. L’assunto è che nel linguaggio vi è qualcosa di problematico, la coesistenza del livello logico con quello pragmatico, in un continuo movimento, che non può essere fermato nei segni, e in tal senso, è propriamente l’indicibile, l’inafferrabile. Il linguaggio vive proprio per e di questa costante aspirazione a dire quell’indicibile, a portare dentro di sé quell’inafferrabile. 67 What does speaking mean? General opinion will certainly respond that speaking is the activity of the organs of speech and hearing. Speaking means phonetically expressing and communicating the impulses of the human soul. These are guided by thoughts. Using this definition of language, three things are taken for granted as being true: firstly, speaking is expressing. The idea of language as expression is the most common one. It presupposes an inner state that is being expressed. Viewing language as expression means seeing it in its external guise, precisely in the act that explains expression as stemming from an inner state. Secondly, language is considered an activity of man. Therefore we cannot say “language speaks”, since this would equate to stating that it is language that gives man being. Seen in this light, man would be a premise of language. Lastly, the expressing done by man consists of giving the real and the unreal a presence and an image (M. Heidegger, tr. it. 1993: 29). We talk in our sleep and when we are awake, we are always talking, even «when we don’t utter a word, but simply listen or read, even when we are not listening or reading, but engaged in a task or relaxing in idleness. We talk because talking is part of us» (Ivi, 27). Speaking means expressing and communicating the impulses of the human soul, which are guided by thoughts. The word that expresses thought is already an initial intrinsic deformation of that thought, which in its unexpressed purity, would be nothing. What is expressed does not exist either, outside what expresses it, but expressing is still different from what is expressed, and cannot be confused with it. Between the word and the thought there is therefore no priority of one over the other, but mutual presupposition and a perpetual overlapping: it is at this level that the link between word and thought is actually affected by creativity. Between thought and word there has always implicitly been an original complicity that makes it impossible to separate the two dimensions, thought and expression: «thought and word anticipate each other, they constantly replace each other. Every thought comes from the word and returns to it, every word is born in thoughts and finishes there. Among men, and in each of them there is an incredible flourishing of words, of which thoughts are the framework» (M. Merleau-Ponty, tr. it. 1967: 40). If the word presupposed the thought, if speaking meant first of all accessing the object through an intention of knowledge or a representation, one would not understand why thought seeks expression as its goal, because the most familiar object seems indefinite until we find a name for it, because even the thinking subject is in a sort of ignorance of his own thoughts until he has formulated them for himself or written or said them, as is shown by the example of many writers who start a book without knowing exactly what they are going to narrate. A thought that was content to live for itself beyond the difficulties of words and communication, would fall into unconsciousness as soon as it appeared, so it would not exist even for itself (M. Merleau-Ponty, tr. it. 1965: 247-248). 68 On the basis of this definition of language three things are considered certain: speaking is expressing, language is regarded as an activity of man, and man’s expressing consists of giving presence and form to the real and the unreal. Therefore language appears as an inner dimension that is incarnated in expression giving shape to the unrepresentable; it is not merely a sum of positive elements added to each other, but a series of diachronic relations; the linguistic sign cannot be seen as having one definite, univocal meaning, but it is in the gaps and in the opposition between signs that all language becomes meaningful. Language is a constant work-in-progress, which cannot be schematised and viewed in static form. It is an equilibrium in incessant movement between signs and signs, living and dynamic, and is continually being renewed. It is about what is said: talking does not finish in what is said, but in what is said the talking is captured and held. L’idée existe au-delà de lui comme la petite phrase au-delà de son exécution ou “apparition“ [...] Voir = réversibilité du voyant et du visible, penser = réversibilité de la Parole opérante et du [x] nommable. As far as language is concerned, if it is the relation between signs that gives each sign meaning, then meaning arises from their overlapping as well as from the gaps between words; meaning lies in the verbal chain since it stands against other signs; its sense is an integral part of language; words always operate on a background of words, and it is never anything but a fold in the vast fabric of speaking. To understand language we cannot look up some internal lexicon that will give us, for the words and the forms, the pure thoughts they should correspond to: all we need is to give ourselves to its life, to its movement of differentiation and articulation, to its eloquent gesticulation. There is therefore opacity in language: it is never interrupted to leave space for pure meaning, it is never limited unless it be by another language and its meaning is always set in words. Like a charade, it can only be understood by the interaction of signs, each of which, taken in isolation, is either unclear or banal: only together do they make sense (M. Merleau-Ponty, tr. it. 1967: 66-67). The opacity of language enables us to have a language that is really able to communicate: what makes language opaque and clouds its transparency, is not a limitation of language but is in fact what makes it alive and inexhaustible. «Idée d’une expression jamais achevée». 69 Meaning is, in a way, coextensive to language in its entirety; it is not distinguished from language but is there, totally immersed in it. At this level, there occurs something similar to what happens in painting, where rather than being expressed by the picture, the meaning impregnates the picture. Language does not express a meaning, but it is actually the meaning that permeates and impregnates language, and the original dimension is a kind of huge fabric from which, like endless folds, can emerge the multiplicity of direct speech. Construing the communicative universe therefore means giving voice to the tensive lines that shape language from within, pushing the limits of language without completely breaking the structural constraints, to try in vain to create a kind of foreign language within one’s own language. Language does not subside into a static state, being constantly pushed beyond its limits by the inner forces that give life to it. Beneath the conceptual meaning of words there is an existential meaning. Meaning is a dynamic object created intersubjectively and having a phenomenological dimension that is involved in every encounter. This is in contrast to the classical cognitive approaches that see meaning as an intrinsic property of certain language forms. Language evolves on the basis of the transformations of the natural and social context in which they happen to live. These modifications are perceived and expressed in language, which is not a reality complete unto itself, a sort of absolute subject of forms of life and of tradition, but something closely connected to the context in which it is determined and which, thanks to its typical symbolic elaboration, it helps to determine. We need to add another interpretative category to the threesided communication situation analysed by Davidson, Peirce and Wittgenstein. This is the category of common feeling. In the constitution of language as process, we can identify the space of common feeling, which is the space where one is with others in the world. But while this theoretical orientation adds to the debate the important idea of the constitution of the language process and of its situated-ness in communicative relations, the context of analysing the language process must be broadened and not restricted to the subjectivity of sender and receiver, since if language were locked between these two, the process itself would be objectivised and limited to the relational exchange. In the light of contemporary philosophical thinking, language is to be seen as a set of margins between signs and meanings, in a process of continual revelation, in a transformation of contents that generate other contents. The assumption is that in language there is something problematic, the coexistence of the logical level with the pragmatic one, in a continuous 70 movement that cannot be stopped in signs. In this sense, it is right to call it the unsayable, the ungraspable. Language lives precisely due to and on this constant aspiration to say the unsayable, to take into oneself the ungraspable. But if we move one step at a time, in language there is on the one hand its logical form and on the other hand the construction of a set of relations between the language expressions and the entities that help to make up the semantic contents of utterances. And it is in this second phase that semantics takes up what was bequeathed by ontology. In the concrete determinations inherent to the discourse, we see the inadequacy of a vision of the phenomenon of language seen as a mere system, and the need to go beyond the structuralist approach in a perspective that can account for the capacity, typical of discourse, to transcend the system in order to refer to the world. The semantic approach therefore finds confirmation on the level of reflection where by interpreting the symbols encountered in existence, the self-interpreting subject will no longer be the Husserlian and Cartesian cogito, but in the words of Ricoeur, an existent being that discovers (P. RICOEUR, tr. it. 1977: 14-16). And this is the phenomenological dimension in which language is placed. In this phenomenological perspective we find a field of signification that is prior to any objectivity; meaning is found to originate in the phenomenological dimension of the intersubjective space. This opens the way to going beyond idealism, beyond the subject locked in his system of signification, in order to affirm the worldliness of man as a living being, the boundaries of whose intentionality are the whole world. And it is precisely because using a phenomenological approach in our reasoning makes us reflect on the world and on our way of being with others, that it is useful to reflect on the world that is being referred to, in which every “thing” is not locked in on itself but is part of a context which brings many relations together into a single figure. At the centre is the concept of relation, no longer in the sense of a closed circle, but seen as a movement that stays inexorably open and cannot be completed. The relation between activity and passivity This is the relation between activity and passivity based on which there is a rethinking of the ontology of the Whole as hollow fullness, a 71 plurality made up of finite sharing/dividing. This brings into question the clear separation between the perceiving subject and the perceived object, between the subject’s activity and at the same time its passivity. And this is the complex path leading straight back to the investigation of the world’s inner relational modalities, in order to discover their interweaving with the sensitive substratum, the sediment of the world, and thus reveal the latter as a “system of equivalences” which is “already there”, prior to any explicit ideation. In other words this investigation concerns identities that are no longer the finished product, namely the clearly defined integral forms of a relation between elements that are already given and are confined within the borders of a pre-established, separate individuality, but identities that arise due to and out of the relation with all others. To paraphrase Merleau-Ponty, “each is what others see of it”. Moreover, meaning is not only experience of the world, but experience with others. This leads us to recognise the fact that every being is for the others that surround it and look at it and that its existence means communicating with others, being-with. This being-with explains why, rather than being a synthetically organised objective grouping, or a multiplicity of objects beside each other, the world is in fact a system of concordances and of inherent concordances, i.e. a network of relational exchanges all referring to each other. The ontological inclination of this argument leads to the following analogy: just as the body also sees itself and in so doing becomes light revealing to the visible what is within it and achieving the segregation of the internal and external, so the word, supported by language’s many ideal relations, is a certain region of the universe of meanings “it is both the organ and resonator of all the others and, due to this, is coextensive to the thinkable. The word is a total part of the significations like the flesh of the visible, as it is in relation to Being through a being, and lastly, as it is narcissistic, eroticised, endowed with a natural magic that lures other significations into its net in the same way as the body feels the world by feeling itself”(M. Merleau-Ponty, tr. it. 1964: 141). Therefore, although it is seen as a dynamic object, what is investigated is no longer the word, but the region of the word. The word expands into the invisible and with it the body’s belonging to being and the bodily relevance of every being are extended to semantic operations. So in this new ontology, the linguistic process is interwovern with the interlocutor’s process of consciousness. But how does language express this movement? How can the really existing be brought into language? 72 Language represents the subject’s taking a stance in the world of its meanings and in itself holds an inner dimension, but this is not a closed and self-conscious thought. Language tries to express the drives of the real through allusions and interweavings, multiplying the relational threads of meaning. For example for the speaking subject and for those listening to him, the making of sounds brings about a certain structuring of experience, a certain modulation of existence. The system of sounds and definite words is decentered in the discourse, breaks down and is reorganised according to a pattern that is revealed to the speaker and the listener at the very moment the communication is underway. This is the journey towards language, in which every change taking place in the language’s essential words determines at the same time, the change in the way things and the world reveal themselves to man. Corresponding to the system of words, of signs forming the visible side of language, there is the invisible side, the hidden framework. Language lives of the impossibility of saying what one would like to say, it revolves around a deep cavity without which language itself would not exist, and having retrieved the pragmatic nature of meaning, it becomes language in action. And this is shown even more clearly in the figurative sense accompanying language: a frown, a gulp, a sigh,....give meaning to the language outside of ourselves, and trascend its rigid patterns of words. This is visual sound, conveyed from the sender to the receiver, in which the word becomes: “the echo of the bare figure resounding in the open depths” (J.L. NANCY, tr. it. 2004: 8). The word region, as an echo, is not confined to a single “sound” that resonates in the depths of the individual, not closed but open to receiving and recreating. If we follow these arguments we come upon perspectives to make us reflect, leading to the redefining of the process of construing meaning through the lens of phenomenology: the symbol cannot be interpreted or reduced to a mere sign, but rather it must be acknowledged that its interpretation is unending. It is a point in the construction and development of the hermeneutical circle. Language is not exclusively an operation of the intelligence, or an exclusive motor phenomenon; it is wholly motor and wholly intelligence; it holds a very broad, complex meaning and is not reduced to the operations and systems of signification. To paraphrase Heidegger: everything is language, insofar as it is the abode of Being, the essence of Being; however our relation with language is uncertain, obscure, almost impossible to express; in various ways, speaking arises from the “unspoken”, whether this be something not yet expressed or 73 something that must remain unexpressed in that it is a reality that eludes words. Following these thoughts we can see the interconnection between the spoken and something that eludes words: not only something that has not yet come to words, but perhaps will never be able to reach them. The communicative dimension The conceptual level of language, composed of figures, purely idealconventional signs, therefore falls in a communicative dimension in a network of shared actions, which involves all the subjects participating in the conversation, and expresses their reciprocal acting, their relating to each other and moving–towards-each-other. In this communicative dimension meaning is always a process. It is the co-feeling situation among the subjects, in which understanding is achieved. The communicative approach has contributed to the development of the concept of language and communication. The communicative relation is an exchange not only of contents but also of semantic, grammatical or pragmatic categories or of language functions. This complex perspective takes on a relational power, in that it presupposes and suggests the relation, creating space for reflection and for the interlocutors’ co-responsibility within the place where it is carried out. Communication is achieved in a sliding of meanings between the interlocutors, in filigree there emerges the importance of the pragmatic side of language: to have real understanding one needs to immerse oneself in the concrete use of language, in the meaningful slipping that the interlocutors impose on terms. Consequently the origins of meaning are not to be found in a cognitive system, or in a socially isolated subject, but in an intersubjective space. We might add that the process is continuous; it is the revelation and plurality of sense, and the unsayable in the relating of experiences. Getting down to the substance of the question, there is the attempt to give meaning back to the depth of existence. The critical reflection that opens up tries to bring meaning down from the pedestal of individual creation to involve it in the tormented adventure of existence, in communicative intersubjectivity influenced by the context, as internalised social resources. And it is precisely by bringing into play this type of problems that the need arises to rethink the chiasm between context and language in a new way. And this is the path outlined as an alternative to the classical cognitive 74 approaches that conceive of meaning as the intrinsic property of certain language forms. In the light of the analysis made so far, in this system of relations, in this relational key – or in a system of relations in which we ourselves are held, insofar as we are made up of them in this pre-objective_framework (M. Merleau-Ponty, 1969: 268), meaning turns out to be not a mere construct, though formed in the phenomenological experience, but in constant transformation. The hermeneutics of the symbol is opened up, keeping phenomenology engaged in dialogue with the philosophy of thought generated by the Cartesian cogito. In other words, reflection and interpretation are two complementary moments in a hermeneutical journey that integrates cogito with the awareness that man’s concrete situation is not just that of being the centre of his existence, but also of being in the world of others. These are the philosophical implications of the conception of situated meaning. The words, the vowels, the phonemes from an analysis that considers not just the meaning of words as concepts and terms, but also the emotional sense as ways of singing the world «and they are destined to represent objects not because of an objective resemblance, as was believed by the naïve theory of onomatopoeia, but because they bring out and, properly speaking, they express the emotional essence [...]. The preponderance of vowels in one language, of consonants in another, the systems of construction and syntax should not be arbitrary conventions to express the same thought, but more ways for the human body to celebrate the world and, ultimately, to experience it» (M. Merleau-Ponty 1967: 258259). This is a communicative dimension in which signs are already themselves the meaning, and the latter is entirely absorbed in the concrete gestural-expression situated in the sender-receiver relationship: «la parole porte toute idée et devient elle-même une idée». It is not the complete achievement of language that one must seek, it is not towards the determination of the weight of words, but the thought of these “fields of thought”, as places where communication is «faire renaître dans l’esprit d’autrui moyennant signes extérieurs une conception qui ètait dans celui de l’auteur. Deux sujets pensants et des signes». The way sign systems work conveys a particular relationship with reality. The relationship of signs finds an objective underpinning in the social relations between individuals and the world around them. Generally speaking, casting light on the laws of language means comparing the 75 structural conditions of expression with the settings where it develops, with the reasons and rules of its genesis, with the multiple settings in which experience gains meaning. Once it has been verified that this deep need of semiotics matches and melds with Husserl’s legitimate demand to investigate “the way the life world acts as an underpinning”, we have the solution to the riddle which says for man “there is constantly a pre-scientific world” which is pre-linguistic and pre-meaning. It is then easy to realise that this attempt at a radical foundation exhausts itself in the blind alleys of an idealistic approach, which entrusts absolute subjectivity with the extreme task of construing the meaning of the world. One achieves however an effective explanatory capacity when semiotic observation, which holds that the basis of generalisation and idealisation finds its roots in the typical relations that objectively take place in social life showing the articulation of language and real action. This calls into play, in other words, the real configuration of the actual work of language, making up language acts. Basically one can talk about producing sense only when one takes man’s production into concrete consideration; man starts to make sense of reality, he places between himself and reality the intelligible-significant realm, when he triggers the dialectics of his own production. The significant , like the intelligible, entails a coming to awareness which gives expression to the significations passively preconstituted in the real work carried out in the life world. In the perspective of this argument, the communicative dimension needs to start from relations and dialogue to be able to construct the interlocutory space that leads to mutual understanding and possible agreement. Communication in the class context The constant presence of the relation between a communicative way of acting and the context can be seen when observing communication at school. The initial assumption is that interaction in teaching-learning is «a construction of a shared space within which an agreement can be negotiated as the outcome of the participants’ capacity to dialogue and relate» (D. Coppola, 2008). In this space of interlocutory co-responsibility, communication is not just competence and language event, but it is the construction of a shared meaning and communicative action (J. Habermas, tr. it. 1997). 76 The dialogic perspective tends to give depth to things, to make them more complex. It presupposes and suggests exchange through relating. Placing dialogue at the basis of the teaching/learning process means creating, within lessons, spaces for reflection and interlocutory coresponsibility. In this context communicative competence is required in every kind of language event, in order to consider the teaching/learning process an «active construction of theoretical-practical knowledge (knowing and knowing how to), of tools, values and ways of being, all the outcome of the negotiation of meanings and a reflection of the ways of being and complex dynamics that are not only personal but also socio-cultural» (D. Coppola, 2008: 36). The teacher’s communicative style is also reflected in the choice of linguistic-cultural models. This choice should be oriented towards a plurinormative didactics; in other words it should pay attention to linguistic-cultural diversification and to the development of the ability to use the language in different contexts. In short, «all behaviour is communication and all communication influences behaviour» (P.Watzlawick, J. Helmick Beavin, Don D.