Corpus, meaning, intertextuality

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Corpus, meaning, intertextuality

• Wolfgang Teubert

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Structuralism

• Language (and other social artefacts) is a
  system.
• The (linguistic) sign has two aspects form and
  meaning. There is no meaning without form. (Do
  thoughts have a form?)
• Meaning is the difference of one sign in respect
  to all other signs.
• Structuralism is, by definition, a synchronic
  approach to the study of the products of culture
  (including language), considered independently of
  their authors, consumers and circumstances of
  production.

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The language system and its location

• Emile Durkheim (famous sociologist) Language is
  a social system, and therefore it is located in
  groups (and only secondarily in individuals).
• Ferdinand de Saussure a) Langue is a collective
  and, at the same time, mental fact parole is an
  individual creation b) language change is a
  parole phenomenon.
• Maurice Merleau-Ponty (famous sociologist) The
  shared linguistic world is the product of the
  sedimentation of an intersubjective practice.

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Representation vs. communicationconceptual vs.
textual approach

• Representation relationship between sign and
  object. (Language represents reality.)
• Communication relationship between people, or,
  rather, texts (for written language). (Language
  is for communication.)
• Signs signify (denote, represent) an object.
• Texts mean something to a person , and we may be
  told in subsequent texts how hearers interpret
  them.
• Signification (denotation) results from
  decontextualisation (lexical knowledge
  synchronic).
• Textual meaning is (hermeneutical) interpretation
  (encyclopaedic knowledge diachronic).

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Noam Chomsky The language system is in the head!

• The language faculty is a mental (and not a
  social) faculty. We find the language system in
  the mind (cognitivism).
• Language is not learned by the application of
  reinforcement (as claimed by behaviourism).
• The language system (grammar) is, to a large
  extent, hard-wired.
• The analysis of la parole (performance) does not
  tell us about la langue (competence).
• An actual corpus is almost useless for
  linguistic analysis.

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Claude Lévi-Strauss (famous anthropologist)

• believes that underlying structures - whether in
  kinship systems, myths, rituals or objects such
  as masks - are evidence for the way the mind
  works cognitivism
• believes that the human mind operates in terms of
  binary oppositions and that such oppositions
  structure all the phenomena of human culture
  structuralism/cognitivism
• identifies meaning by locating each story or
  artefact in a transformation set such that
  each individual element stands in differential,
  contrastive or oppositional relation to every
  other structuralism

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Cognitive linguistics, or how does the mind work?

• Meanings are in the head.
• Cognitivism looks into behaviourisms black box.
• The computer is the model of the mind.
• The mind uses the universal language of thought.
• Natural language expressions are converted into
  mental representations.
• Mental representations are processed
  syntactically (algorithmically).
• Meaning is reduced to syntactic properties.
• The mind is a syntactic (algorithmic) engine the
  mind is a computer.
• Intentionality (consciousness) is not required.

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A brief history of mental concepts

• Aristotle Peri hermeneias Spoken words are the
  symbols of mental experience.
• Boethius In perihermeneias Spoken words
  primarily signify mental concepts, secondarily
  denote the things.
• Anselm of Canterbury Monologion Mental words
  are natural words (similitude!) and thus
  identical for all human beings.
• Thomas of Erfurt Grammatica speculativa Mental
  concepts are the same for all men.
• William of Ockham Summa logicae Verba mentis
  (mental concepts) are the signs of a lingua
  mentalis (language of thought).
• Sole dissenting voice Augustine We acquire
  mental concepts through spoken language.

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A first digression Thought and language

• The primordial function of language is not
  communication but the externalisation of
  thought...The problem of our ancestors... was
  how to pair thoughts we have with the sounds we
  make.
• There is innateness without adaptation and there
  is thought (expressed in an innate, universal
  language of thought) without there necessarily
  being (natural) language.
• Jerry Fodor 'Give me that juicy bit over there'.
  LRB 27, 30 (06.10.05)

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A second digression mental concepts

• In Ockhams (and some cognitivists) mental
  lexicon, there is one concept that stands for one
  referent.
• Would there be synonyms? Would there be
  ambiguity? Would we find pronouns? Would there be
  metaphors?

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From sign to text intentionality meaning is
more than the structuralist opposition between
concepts

• I. is a characteristic feature of mental and
  linguistic states according to which they have an
  object or content and are thus about something
• I. means to be aware of the meaning of a symbolic
  expression (a text segment)
• I. is what people (can) have but computers cannot
• I. is having a first-person experience
• Interpreting a text is having a first-person
  experience

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Intentionality and corpus linguistics

• We (as linguists) do not have direct access to
  first-person experiences.
• We do have access to texts, texts that make up
  the discourse.
• Texts do not have first-person experiences. But
• Texts are the testimony of first-person
  experiences.
• Texts are about something. They communicate
  content.
• Texts create first-person experiences. They
  create intentionality.

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Corpus linguistics an alternative approach to
meaning

• Language is discourse. Language is la parole.
• The discourse is the totality of texts
  communicated by the members of the discourse
  community.
• Language is not a mental but a social phenomenon.
• Language is the exchange of content.
• We can look for meaning is in the discourse, not
  in the head.

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Corpus linguistics means

• The discourse generates its own conventions
• The mental lexicon is a reflection of the
  register of a discourse.
• The discourse is auto-referential we talk about
  what has been said.
• Each new contribution to the discourse modifies
  the meaning of what has been said before.
• Meaning is negotiable.
• Meaning is not stable. (Texts are not stable)
• The discourse has, by necessity, a diachronic
  dimension.

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Two perspectives of corpus linguisticsrepresenta
tion vs.communication

• If we look at text segments as units of meaning,
  we make a generalisation.
• Units of meaning are are recurrent
  representations of signifieds. Units of meaning
  are generalisations.
• The study of units if meaning requires a
  synchronic approach.
• If we look at what a text segment communicates,
  we view it as a unique occurrence.
• What makes a text segment a unique occurrence is
  the uniqueness of its intertextual links.
• Intertextuality requires a diachronic perspective.

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Corpus linguistics the diachronic (textual)
(hermeneutical) perspective

• Each text is a reaction to previous texts
• Each text segment or instantiation of a lexical
  item can be viewed as a unique occurrence.
• Research questions
• What did the text (segment) mean when it was
  written?
• (Intertextual links!) Is it a response to
  something said previously? Were similar things
  said at the time?
• Where, how and why has it been repeated since?
• How was it interpreted after it was written?
• How relevant is it?

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Hermeneutics and the diachronic corpus of social
Vatican encyclicals property

• Every man has by nature the right to possess
  property as his own. 1891,Rerum novarum,  6  
• The natural right itself of owning goods ought
  always to remain intact and inviolate, since this
  indeed is a right that the state cannot take
  away. 1931, Quadragesimo anno,  49
• Every man has in principle the right to use all
  the material goods of this earth, and this right
  can by no means be abolished, not even by other
  rights. 1941, Whitsun address.
• The right to private ownership of goods has
  permanent validity. 1961, Mater et magistra,
   109
• Private property does not constitute for anyone
  an absolute and unconditional right. 1967,
  Populorum progressio.  23
• The violation of the human right to ownership of
  property leads to inefficiency. 1991, Centesimus
  annus,  24

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Intentionality of the author or the borrowed
intentionality of the text?We are always dealing
with written language.

• Inscription becomes synonymous with the semantic
  autonomy of the text, which results from the
  disconnection of the mental intention of the
  author from the verbal meaning of the text, of
  what the author meant and what the text means.
  What the text means now matters more than what
  the author meant when he wrote it. (Paul Ricoeur
  1976 29 f.)

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Jacques Derrida Limited inc a b c (1977)

• Writing is an iterative structure, cut off from
  consciousness.
• The unity of the signifying form only
  constitutes itself by the virtue of its
  iterability, by the possibility of its being
  repeated on the absence of a determinate
  signified. (cf. property)
• Every sign, linguistic or non-linguistic, in a
  small or large unit, can be cited, put in
  quotation marks, and in doing so it can break
  with every given context, engendering an infinity
  of new contexts.

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Michel Foucault LArchéologie du savoir (The
Archeology of Knowledge) (1969)

• One is led therefore to the project of a pure
  description of discursive textual events. This
  description is easily distinguishable from a
  Chomskyan analysis of language.
• The statement is always an event that neither la
  langue nor the structural meaning can quite
  exhaust.
• We must establish the correlations of one
  statement with other statements that may be
  connected with it.
• We need the building-up of coherent and
  homogeneous corpora of documents (open or closed,
  exhausted or inexhaustible)

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Conclusion

• Neither structuralism nor cognitive linguistics
  can account for intentionality.
• Meaning is a social phenomenon. Mental
  representations / mental lexicons are not
  observable and therefore irrelevant.
• Meaning is negotiated and exchanged in the
  contributions to the discourse.
• The discourse has a diachronic dimension. We have
  to examine the intertextual links.
• We do not have the speaker, we only have the
  text.
• Corpus linguistics provides a methodology for a
  hermeneutic approach to meaning.

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• SOME RELEVANT PUBLICATIONS
• Aristotle Peri hermeneias/On interpretation.
  http//classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/interpretation.1
  .1.html
• Chomsky, Noam (2000) New Horizons in the Study
  of Languages and the Mind. Cambridge Cambridge
  University Press
• De Beaugrande, Robert Linguistic Theory The
  Discourse of Fundamental Works.
  http//beaugrande.bizland.com.htm
• Derrida, Jacques (1988) Limited Inc. Evanston
  Northwestern University Press
• Doe, John (1988) Speak into the Mirror A Story
  of Linguistic Anthropology. Lanman, Maryland
  Rowman Littlefield
• Fairclough, Norman (2001) Language and Power.
  London Logman
• Firth, John Rupert (1957) Papers in
  Linguistic Theory 134-1951. London Longman
• Foucault, Michel (1972) The Archaeology of
  Knowledge. London Tavistock Publcations
• Halliday, M. A. K., Wolfgang Teubert, Colin
  Yallop and Anna Cermakova (2004) Lexicology and
  Corpus Linguistics. London Continuum
• Joseph, John E., Nigel Love, Talbot J. Taylor
  (eds.) (2001) Landmarks in Linguistic Thought.
  London Routledge 
• Knowles, Murray, Rosamund Moon (2005)
  Introducing Metaphor. Abingdon Taylor Francis
• Lakoff, George, Mark Johnson (1981) Metaphors we
  Live By. Chicago University of Chicago Press
• Lévi-Strauss, Claude (1988) The Savage Mind.
  London Weidenfeld and Nicholson 
• Morris, Pam (1997) The Bakhtin Reader Selected
  Writings of Bakhtin, Medvedev, Voloshinov.
  London Hodder Arnold
• Pinker, Steven (1994) The Language Instinct. New
  York HarperCollins 
• Pratt, Mary Louise (1986) Fieldwork in common
  places. In James Clifford, George E. Marcus
  Writing Culture. Berkeley University of
  California Press
• Rastier, Francois (1998) On signs and texts
  Cognitive scienceand interpretation. In Applied
  Semiotics/Sémiotique Appliquée, no. 5, 303-330
• Ricoeur, Paul (1976), Interpretation Theory
  Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning, Fort Worth,
  Texas The Texas Christian University Press