The Instruction of Imagination: Language as a Social Communication Technology

by Daniel Dor

The book suggests a new perspective on the essence of human language. This enormous achievement of our species is best characterized as a communication technology - not unlike the social media on the Net today - that was collectively invented by ancient humans for a very particular communicative the instruction of imagination. All other systems of communication in the biological world target the interlocutors' senses; language allows speakers to systematically instruct their interlocutors in the process of imagining the intended meaning - instead of directly experiencing it. This revolutionary function has changed human life forever, and in the book it operates as a unifying concept around which a new general theory of language gradually emerges. Dor identifies a set of fundamental problems in the linguistic sciences - the nature of words, the complexities of syntax, the interface between semantics and pragmatics, the causal relationship between language and thought, language processing, the dialectics of universality and variability, the intricacies of language and power, knowledge of language and its acquisition, the fragility of linguistic communication and the origins and evolution of language - and shows with respect to all of them how the theory provides fresh answers to the problems, resolves persistent difficulties in existing accounts, enhances the significance of empirical and theoretical achievements in the field, and identifies new directions for empirical research. The theory thus opens a new way towards the unification of the linguistic sciences, on both sides of the cognitive-social divide.

Genres: Psychology, Linguistics, Language

275 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 22, 2015

Reviews

[Denys Teptiuk · Rating 5 out of 5]

It might get a bit technical at times, but also totally recommended for a non-linguist community and those interested in languages/linguistics on the amateur level.

[Alina · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dor's analysis of the failings of mainstream approaches to understanding language cuts deep and is exciting to read. He puts his finger on precisely each assumption of the Chomskyian agenda (assumptions which contemporary philosophy of language as a whole also share) that are mistaken. This gave me so much hope that Dor's own picture of language would be a revolution, would provide everything I've been looking for in my search for understanding the nature of language. But I was sorely disappointed. His positive account is incomplete and could be stated in a few pages; the vast majority of this 250 page book involve superfluous tangents, re-statements of his previous few claims, and applications of his claims in examples that are no longer illuminating given the repetition.

The best chapter is the first, introductory chapter. There, he lays out Chomsky's approach and rigorously argues against it. This approach is already committed to a universal syntax that underlies all natural languages; this approach neglects all empirical facts that fly in the face of this commitment. It is pre-scientific, in the sense that it ignores the actual happenings in this world for the sake of affirming some ideological principal. Moreover, this approach assumes that our capacity for language is innate and specific, rather than stemming from more general capacities and is deeply amenable to contingencies of one's environment. As a whole, these assumptions make linguistics believe that all inquiry into language must be inquiry into universal syntax and its relation to surface syntactical structures of natural languages; it makes inquiry into the subjective experiences of individual language users seem to be irrelevant to our understanding of language.

Dor argues that we need a new framework for thinking about language. He believes that his thesis on the nature of language will provide that framework. His thesis is that language is a technology that allows speakers to encode their inner intentions into a certain code, which listeners register. This code then guides the listeners' imaginative faculties, so that they imaginatively reconstruct a type of experience that matches the type of those of the speakers. In this way, language provides a set of instructions for the imagination to recreate experiences that allow the inner states of speaker and listener to match up.

This is really all that Dor contributes. His proposal is fully articulated in chapter 2. The rest of the book involves elaborations on and applications of claims of his proposition; I did not find these illuminating. They rather felt like filler; they expanded on tangential topics (e.g., the evolution of language, the relationship between different words in a lexicon) that neither supported nor added detail to the central claims of his proposal. This book lacks substance as a whole and feels incomplete.

Dor's proposal amounts to an attempt to make literal a deeply intuitive metaphor about language, that language is a tool that allows us to transmit our intentions across the boundaries of our skulls. While language might be understood as occupying this function, this is incomplete. Language has other comparably fundamental functions (e.g., to allow us to re-present and reflect on that which was impulsive or automatic; to enhance our capacities to create and imagine new ideas). Also, I am skeptical of the fruitfulness of thinking about language primarily in terms of its functions. Before we can know what functions language has, it seems that we first need a clear grasp on what language actually does for us -- what experiences we have when we use language.

As an analogy, epistemologically speaking, in order to determine what functions a conch can serve to humans, we need to look at its composition and all the possible interactions a human might have with it. Because conches are fragile and brittle, we can rule out that they might serve functions that require that they be sturdy (e.g., being used as hammers). Because they are hollow inside, we might allow that they serve functions that involve carrying liquids within. To know what functions language serves, we first need to attend to what language does for us. Dor jumps the gun, assuming that there is one fundamental function of language, and that this will yield a fruitful research agenda for all aspects of and questions concerning language. This is wrong. It is as problematically reductive as Chomsky's research program.

Nonetheless, I'd highly recommend readers interested in the nature of language, and who feel skeptical about most contemporary approaches to language, to read chapters 1 and 2. Chapter 10 is interesting, although as a separate mini-essay; it is about the evolution of language and has nothing to do with Dor's actual thesis.

[Owlseyes]

Challenging Chomsky and his Challengers: Brian Boyd Interviews Daniel Dor

in: https://evolution-institute.org/artic...

[Lachlan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book not only because it is beautifully written but also, and above all, because for me it provides an encompassing and credible framework for functional approaches to language and linguistics. To understand the title, you have to read the book. The fundamental idea is that when speaking you use a "symbolic landscape" (basically a lexicon and a grammar) in order to instruct the hearer how to create in his/her imagination an experience that is all his/hers but which the hearer imagines to be close to what the speaker meant. In the way this is worked out in the book, there is much that comes very close to what Kees Hengeveld, I and our colleagues have been developing over the past decade in the framework of Functional Discourse Grammar, so I found the book very congenial and encouraging.