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Who Says What the Words Say? the Problem of Linguistic Meaning in Psychology

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Who Says What the Words Say? the Problem of Linguistic Meaning in Psychology Who Says What the Words Say? The Problem of Linguistic Meaning in Psychology Carlos Cornejo Pontificia Universidad Cat´olica de Chile Abstract. Currently, cognitive psychology assumes that linguistic mean- ing is based on associations between linguistic forms and semantic con- tents. This conception presents empirical as well as logical problems. It does not explain the flexibility of language use and it is inconsistent with the subject-dependence of all cognitive acts. A theoretical analysis of these issues shows a history of confusion between linguistic and phenomeno- logical interpretations of the term meaning, and between the external and internal perspective towards intentionality of mental life. However, if understood as perspectives, both uses underline non-exclusive aspects of linguistic meaning, namely its epistemic objectivity and its ontological subjectivity. It is argued that both aspects could be integrated through the pragmatization and semiotization of meaning. Key Words: generativism, intentionality, meaning, pragmatics, semantics, semiotics, structuralism Introduction: Logical and Psychological Problems with the Notion of Linguistic Meaning For many authors, meaning represents the main aspect of human cognition and its proper theorization amounts to the key problem of cognitive psychology (Bruner, 1990, 1992; Glenberg & Robertson, 2000; Kitchener, 1994). Throughout the entire intellectual history of psychology as a disci- pline, research programs—in the sense of Lakatos (1970)—have emerged emphasizing the fundamental role of the dimension of meaning in human cognitive functioning. Cases in point are the studies on memory (Bartlett, 1932/1961), perception (Wertheimer, 1959), language (B¨uhler, 1934/1999) and developmental psychology (Piaget, 1952; Vygotsky, 1978), which, even before the consolidation of the so-called ‘cognitive revolution’, pointed with different emphases to the relevance of meaning in the configuration of psychological phenomena. Theory & Psychology Copyright © 2004 Sage Publications. Vol. 14(1): 5–28 DOI: 10.1177/0959354304040196 www.sagepublications.com 6 THEORY & PSYCHOLOGY 14(1) The most frequent use of the term ‘meaning’ in cognitive psychology and in the psychology of language designates the contents of linguistic con- structions (e.g. morphemes, words, clauses, etc.). According to this use of ‘meaning’, linguistic constructions evoke objective contents in the speaker’s mind. The objective nature of these representations is verified through the high degree of consensus in a given linguistic community. The association between form and content is thus independent of the subjectivity of the speaker/listener. These contents associated with linguistic forms constitute their semantic content, which has been conceptualized in varying ways in psychology (e.g. Bierwisch & Schreuder, 1992; Burguess & Lund, 1997; Landauer & Dumais, 1997; Rapaport, 1998), semantics (Fauconnier, 1994; Jackendoff, 1988; Katz & Fodor, 1963), philosophy (Putnam, 1975), semi- otics (Eco, 1976) and formal logic (Hintikka, 1989; Kripke, 1972). This common way of understanding the concept of meaning is, however, in conflict with some theoretical beliefs strongly shared by the cognitive psychologists’ scientific community. In order to understand this conflict, it is necessary to consider one of the most recurring and well-established findings of cognitive psychology: that subjects actively construct their experience. The knower is not a mere passive recipient who reproduces, in a quasi-pictorial manner, the information he or she receives from the environ- ment. Instead, there are a number of internal processes, normally automatic, that participate in the structuring of external reality. This thesis, known by some authors as cognitive constructivism (Christmann & Scheele, 2001; Neisser, 1967; N¨use, Groeben, Freitag, & Schreier, 1991), has been empiric- ally demonstrated in various cognitive processes (e.g. through the verifica- tion of top-down influences in human perception, attention and memory) and it represents a common assumption in several theories—many of which are rival in other aspects and range from Gestalt to connectionist models, including theories of information processing and activity theories. The basic idea of the knower as a (co-)constructor (Valsiner, 1994) of experienced reality goes across subdisciplines and theories, and has been characterized as belonging to the epistemological bases of the discipline (Bruner, 1992). Extending this basic constructivist idea to the realm of language comprehension, linguistic meaning should be the result of a subjective interpretation arising from a particular context, that is, ‘the individual’s meaningful construal of the situation’ (Glenberg & Robertson, 2000, p. 383), based on the assumption that ‘nothing is meaningful in itself’ (Lakoff, 1987, p. 292). However, if we claim that it is the subject using language who construes words or confers meaningfulness on them, it is no longer possible to maintain that words have an inherently associated meaning or semantic content. How can we reconcile the notion that a linguistic expression has a semantic content with the notion that it is the subject who understands it who constructs its meaning? Does a linguistic expression possess a meaning eo ipso, or does it become meaningful only as it is constructed by the CORNEJO: LINGUISTIC MEANING IN PSYCHOLOGY 7 speaker/hearer? Is there a conventional content that is attached to linguistic constructions, which is more or less independent of who uses them and where they are used, or are these constructions rather ‘a vehicle through which the meanings can be realized’ (Budwig, 1995, p. 4)? Can a mental content be, at the same time, given and constructed, a priori and a posteriori? In summary, this view of linguistic meaning generates a contradiction between two theoretical postulates. On the one hand, cognitive psychology asserts that there are objective meanings attached to linguistic constructions, which are, by definition, independent of the subject. On the other hand, cognitive psychology also claims that the meaningfulness of linguistic expressions is the result of an interpretive and constructive process carried out by the speaker/listener, of whom it is therefore not independent. Thus, linguistic meaning becomes at the same time dependent on, and independent of, the subject. The (implicit) solution to this dilemma is to assume the existence of linguistic meanings ‘in the head’ of the speaker/listener. These linguistic meanings are organized in some sort of mental lexicon, to which the subject can gain access depending on their use-contingencies (e.g. E.V. Clark, 1993; Jackendoff, 2002). According to this popular view, speakers possess a stock of lexical entries which they use in linguistic comprehension and com- munication. However, this account of language comprehension creates a new problem. Assuming that a given expression can be associated to more than one linguistic meaning, subjects must be able to decide, based on contextual cues, which is the appropriate meaning, that is, which lexical entry is required in order to understand the expression. Yet, to be able to make this kind of lexical decision, subjects also need to understand the meanings of all the alternative lexical entries. This requires additional lexical information if one wishes to preserve the consistency of the theory. This additional lexical information creates the need for a second, deeper, compre- hension, namely the comprehension not of linguistic expressions but of lexical entries. This creates an obvious regressus infinitus: the existence of linguistic meanings ‘in the head’ pushes the conflict between the objective, conventional nature of linguistic meanings and their constructive, con- textual, subjective nature towards a deeper level. Thus, this solution gives rise to the same original questions, this time at a higher logical level: How can these two notions be compatible, that lexical entries possess a semantic content and that at the same time this content is the outcome of an active interpretive process on the part of the subject? Does a lexical entry possess a meaning eo ipso, or is it meaningful only as the speaker/listener compre- hends it? And so on. Summarizing, the mental lexicon hypothesis is not able to solve the conflict between the subject-independence of linguistic meaning and the subject-dependence of all forms of meaningfulness. 8 THEORY & PSYCHOLOGY 14(1) In order to understand the nature of this apparent contradiction, it is helpful to examine the interdisciplinary origins of the traditional concept of linguistic meaning in psychology. In the following section I conduct a theoretical and historical analysis of the definition given to the term ‘meaning’ by the school of structuralism, the first great school of linguistics, and I discuss the ways in which the legacy of this view has produced (paradoxically, through the generativist school) the contradiction presented before. Following this, I show how the tension between meaning’s depend- ence on the subject and its independence of it is observed in linguistics as well, specifically in the fields of semantics and pragmatics, in the discussion about the role played by context in the formation of linguistic meaning. In the following section, I discuss in greater depth the epistemological premises underlying the two conflicting views of linguistic meaning, and I argue that the problem of meaning represents a much deeper schism in the field of psychology,
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