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The Idiolect, Chaos, and Language Custom Far from Equilibrium

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The Idiolect, Chaos, and Language Custom Far from Equilibrium THE IDIOLECT, CHAOS, AND LANGUAGE CUSTOM FAR FROM EQUILIBRIUM: CONVERSATIONS IN MOROCCO by JOSEPH W. KUHL (Under the Direction of William A. Kretzschmar, Jr.) ABSTRACT This dissertation is a theoretical investigation into the concept of the idiolect and Language Custom and begins with an appraisal of the work of the German linguist Hermann Paul who is generally regarded as having developed these concepts in his work The Principles of the History of Language (1888). His concept of the idiolect was rediscovered by Weinreich, Labov, and Herzog (1968) and served as a central point of departure in their monograph Empirical Foundations for a Theory of Language Change. Weinreich et al. used Paul’s ideas as a counterfoil to lend validity to their ideas which would soon after form the basis of sociolinguistics. They were highly critical of Paul’s ideas as there was no place for the linguistic individual in their paradigm which posited social forces as the causal agent for language change and variation. Paul, on the other hand, believed that individuals changed their idiolects spontaneously and through contact with other idiolects. With these recovered ideas, the work then examines the idiolect as an open system according to the principles of Natural Systems Theory. Defined as an open system, the idiolect is able to innovate and adapt to new linguistic input in an effort to establish Language Custom, which is itself an open and variable system with no fixed parameters or constraints. Having dispensed with the structuralist and generative approaches to language as a closed system, the idiolect and Language Custom are developed using the principles and ideas from Complexity and Chaos Theory. The driving force behind establishing Language Custom is called The Principle of Concord: the fundamental goal of all communication being the mutual understanding of speakers in discourse. Following the work of Ilya Prigogine, language contact between idiolects is said to occur in either near-to-equilibrium situations or far-from-equilibrium settings. Near to equilibrium is generally one’s native linguistic habitat and the setting in which we are able to derive grammars and define specific codes and languages. The fieldwork portion of this research was undertaken in a far-from-equilibrium setting: Morocco. INDEX WORDS: Hermann Paul, Idiolect, Open Systems, Chaos Theory, Complexity, Language Contact. THE IDIOLECT, CHAOS AND LANGUAGE CUSTOM FAR FROM EQUILIBRIUM: CONVERSATIONS IN MOROCCO by JOSEPH W. KUHL BA, University of Georgia, 1981 MS, Georgia State University, 1988 A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY ATHENS, GEORGIA 2003 © 2003 Joseph W. Kuhl All Rights Reserved THE IDIOLECT, CHAOS AND LANGUAGE CUSTOM FAR FROM EQUILIBRIUM: CONVERSATIONS IN MOROCCO by JOSEPH W. KUHL Major Professor: Dr. William A. Kretzschmar, Jr. Committee: Dr. Ben Blount Dr. Don Mccrear Electronic Version Approved: Maureen Grasso Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia August 2003 iv DEDICATION To The Colonel at Home and Hamudan in Morocco v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express thanks to my Major Professor Dr. William A. Kretzschmar, Jr. whose ideas and approaches to linguistics helped inspire and shape my own theoretical models. And to the rest of my committee Dr. Ben Blount and Dr. Don Mccreary for their time and patience with this work. Special thanks to my parents for their backing and support in this undertaking. Finally, I would like to thank my many friends and neighbors in Martil, Tetouan, Tangier and Fes who helped make my stay in Morocco both memorable and productive, especially my friend Mohammed Hamudan in Martil who facilitated everything from housing, border crossings, and introductions around town, not an easy tasks given the global political climate during that year of research. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS................................................................................................V CHAPTER 1 THE IDIOLECT IN LINGUISTICS AND LANGUAGE CUSTOM ...................1 1.1 OVERVIEW................................................................................................1 1.2 INTRODUCTION.......................................................................................4 1.3 BLOOMFIELD, BLOCH: HERMAN PAUL’S IDIOLECT DISMISSED ................................................................................................7 1.4 WEINREICH, LABOV, AND HERZOG: PAUL AND VARIATIONISM ......................................................................................12 1.5 PAUL’S LANGUAGE CUSTOM: A REAPPROPRIATION.................20 1.6 SUMMARY: IDIOLECT AND LANGUAGE CUSTOM.......................25 2 THE IDIOLECT IN GENERAL LINGUISTIC THEORY .................................28 2.1 GENERATIVE LINGUISTICS.................................................................28 2.2 I AND E LANGUAGE..............................................................................30 2.3 INTEGRATIONIST THEORIES ..............................................................33 2.4 IDIOLECT AS SOCIOLINGUISTIC MYTH...........................................37 2.5 MULTILINGUALISM..............................................................................42 2.6 WITTGENSTEIN’S PRIVATE LANGUAGE ARGUMENT.................49 3 LANGUAGE, NATURAL SYSTEMS, AND COMPLEXITY THEORY.........57 vii 3.1 INTRODUCTION .....................................................................................57 3.2 EMERGENCE OF NATURAL SYSTEMS THEORY.............................58 3.3 LASZLO AND NATURAL SYSTEMS ...................................................63 3.4 INVARIENCE OF NATURAL SYSTEMS..............................................64 3.5 SELF CREATIVE SYSTEMS ..................................................................73 3.6 IDIOLECT AS AUTONOMOUS ADAPTIVE ORGANISM ..................78 4 CHAOS, ENTROPY, AND FAR FROM EQUILIBRIUM SYSTEMS...............91 4.1 PRIGOGINE AND DISSIPATIVE STRUCTURES ................................91 4.2 GRAMMAR AND EQUILIBRIUM .........................................................97 4.3 FAR FROM EQUILIBRIUM .................................................................101 4.4 IDIOLECTAL CONTACT AS DISSIPATIVE SYSTEMS....................104 4.5 PRINCIPLES, TERMINOLOGY, AND DEFINITIONS .......................111 4.6 SUMMARY.............................................................................................126 5 CONVERSATIONS IN MOROCCO ..................................................................129 5.1 SELF-REFERENTIAL INVESTIGATIONS..........................................129 5.2 FIELDWORK RATIONALE ..................................................................134 5.3 SETTING, APPROACHES AND AIMS ................................................138 5.4 DATA ISSUES ........................................................................................139 5.5 MOROCCO, ANDALUS, THE RIF .......................................................144 5.6 LANGUAGE LANDSCAPES.................................................................148 5.7 CEUTA, TETOUAN, MARTIL..............................................................152 5.8 BIG AL ....................................................................................................159 5.9 FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS ...............................................................164 viii 5.10 SOCIOLOGUES ...................................................................................167 5.11 TRANSCRIPTION AND PRESENTATION..........................................168 6.1 TOWARD AN ANALYTICAL MODEL OF DISCOURSE..................179 6.2 NOTES ON TRANSCRIPTION.............................................................182 6.3 DISCOURSE TRANSCRIPT: AL AND JOE.........................................185 6.4 DATA ANALYSIS..................................................................................198 6.5 CONCORD THROUGH CODE BREAKING........................................200 6.6 PRODUCTIVE SIDE TRACKS AND BIFURCATIONS......................204 6.7 LARGE SCALE BIFURCATION...........................................................208 6.8 TRANSCRIPT: CROSS TALK AND DISCORD .................................221 6.9 ANALYSIS OF CROSS TALK AND DISCORD .................................223 6.10 TRANSCRIPT OF SOCIOLOGUES ......................................................232 6.11 ANALYSIS OF SOCIOLOGUES...........................................................239 7 CONCLUSIONS..................................................................................................258 7.1 SUMMATION.........................................................................................258 REFERENCES ................................................................................................................265 1 CHAPTER 1 THE IDIOLECT IN LINGUISTICS AND LANGUAGE CUSTOM “We speak our language. How else can we be close to language except by speaking? Even so, our relation to language is vague, obscure, almost speechless. As we ponder this curious situation, it can scarcely be avoided that every observation on the subject will at first sound strange.” Martin Heidegger, On the Way to Language.i 1.1 OVERVIEW This work is a theoretical investigation into the idiolect as conceived by Hermann Paul along with his notion of Language Custom as the transindividual entity that binds speakers of similar codes together in what sociolinguists refer
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