CC BY
0DOI: 10.31249/metodquarterly/02.01.07
The Fourth Centenary Debate of February 23rd.
For citation: The Fourth Centenary Debate of February 23rd. (2022). METHOD: Moscow Quarterly Journal of Social Studies, 2(1), P. 86-104. http://www.doi.org/10.31249/ metodquarterly/02.01.07
Misha Ilyin: Let us start, guys. I hope other participants will join us soon. The key people are already here. Today Ludmila and Kalevi have joined us for the first time. I mailed you the transcripts which Eugenia - who is also with us -was very helpful to prepare. Hopefully, she will do the same again.
Kalevi Kull: It was very helpful to see this transcript.
Misha: Yes, our last meeting was very well transcribed. Still, I have a feeling that we can add to our debate of February 14th one more topic, which is languaging. It is becoming more prominent with each of the meetings, but we had no chance to discuss it properly. Thus, I realized, we'd better combine both topics - centenary and languaging. One of the reasons for doing this is because of Suren, who spoke last time on Lotman's ideas on interlaction of minds, bodies etc. Suren is not here with us. He is now traveling to Tallinn to take part in Lotman celebrations. Last time he mentioned that he is publishing in the journal "Slovo" the transcript of a Lotman's seminar of March 1981. In this seminar they discussed several quite prominent ideas related to languaging - but without using the term.
Actually, Lotman never used the word "0a3biK0BneHHe" (oiazykovlenie) or languaging or anything like that. What was spoken about at this seminar were the two hemispheres of human brain, or rather two mental faculties of human interactions. Naturally, phenomena of languaging turned into the fore of his presentation and the debate.
Actually, the seminar was devoted to the issue of the dialogue between two facilities of our mind, related to hemispheres of our brain. Yuri Mikhailovich demonstrated some phenomena which are now associated with languaging. They emerge and operate inside minds and brains as well as between people. In fact, Lotman used the expression cultural selves. Thus, he referred to different cultures and to specific stages in their development as cultural selves. Let me remind you of my idea of a person changing, but remaining oneself. Lotman's expression cultural self is better. May be semiotic self would be even better to cover all social and even biological aspects. Now it seems to me the best option. 68
At the seminar Lotman discussed ancient times and current times as semiotic entities or cultural selves involved in a kind of dialogue. The problem is, if such a dialogue is possible at all. And if we can consider interaction of different selves - lingual, cultural, social even biological - to be a kind of dialogue. And, ultimately, if such dialogue fits into the whole idea of languaging.
This is a kind of introduction. Let us start now. Our two constant and most active participants, Valery and Sergey. I ask them to begin our debate, Sergey, are you ready?
Sergey Chebanov: What subject, please?
Misha: Whatever subject you choose. The idea is to continue discussion you started last time. You had not elaborated on some of the points. Besides a new topic - the idea of languaging, - was also introduced.
Sergey: I have two points, which are for me in our last discussion and an accessory in your last words. First, the problem of integrity and types of integrity. From this point of view, naturally, I want to discuss different kinds of integrity and the difference between system and organism.
But I am not sure, if we will repeat this question since I did not prepare some materials on the subject. But I have something I can demonstrate even now.
Misha: Well, Sergey, you can email further materials to me or into the group. It will not be a problem. I think that is a good idea to exchange materials.
Sergey: Okay, this was the first question. The second question is the problem of dialogue in your interpretation given right now, for instance, dialogue between two hemispheres, and this is an interesting question for me. First, I was born not alive, and this is because the commissura (corpus callosum) between
two hemispheres has some defects. This is the reason why my hemispheres look partly independent.
Misha: You are two persons in one [laughter].
Sergey: Yes, I am. A very interesting question. I know another person with the same problem, and we discussed the special design of our brain. Therefore, I can talk about this topic with understanding. This is the reason, why I am not ready to describe this connection as dialogue. After all, this is not dialogue.
Misha: Then what is it?
Sergey: Many years ago, we invented special terms. We have introduced a special term for this - enlogue. That is special correspondence and interrelation between something with two participants, while you have a projection on a person and not only two persons but several persons too. And it is closely related to the problem of agency and personality. I believe we cannot speak not about agency but about quasi-personality when we discuss enlogue. This is very funny, but in my last lecture about semiotics I especially discussed the problem of enlogue, and this is because we had a large discussion and several papers on this subject.
And this is very significant for me, but we have the possibility to use language, and we can use language in emphatic function. If we use language only in an emphatic function, we will have enlogue, but what happens to our psyche and physiology during the enlogue, raises many questions.
So, I think there are several important points in this discussion such as the type of holicity or place of language in enlogues with intellectual content, and not only language but different kinds of semiotic means in different kinds of enlogues.
Misha: Yes, that is particularly interesting. When you said that language was not used, I was a bit shocked since for me language is any kind of communication or even interaction that is semiotically mediated. But it's a very broad understanding and, to an extent, metaphorical.
Sergey: Yes, very interesting, but when you speak about communication but I do not ...
Misha: Yes, I do understand that as you think of the exceptional case ...
Sergey: There is a very important problem for me - the difference between communication and communion. A communion as a deeper connection between persons. In English it has two senses: some sort of informal communication and the Eucharist.
Misha: Exactly, when you mentioned that, I immediately got the association of the direct intercourse with a deity without words. Interesting! Just great! Sergey, would you also circulate some additional materials on enlogue and holicity.
Sergey: Okay.
Ludmila Lackova: Speaking about Eucharist you have to note also related words like companion, companionship and company. They are all derived from Latin cum pane - "with bread", meaning sharing bread like apostles did at the Last Supper.
Misha: Excellent. Very important remark. Thank you, Ludmila.
Valery, would you care to share some ideas?
Valery Demyankov: I am only prepared for listening today, but what Sergey said about communion, reminds me of the term 'phatic communion' invented by Bronislaw Malinowski: i.e., a type of linguistic use or a type of speech "in which ties of union are created by a mere exchange of words [...] when language does not function as a means of transmission of thought, but as a mode of action" (see his "The problem of meaning in primitive languages" first published in 1923 and reprinted in Ch.K. Ogden, I.A. Richards "The meaning of meaning", 1927, p. 296-336).
This kind of communion does not transfer views or opinions, properly speaking, but it creates a communicative atmosphere of "being together", the atmosphere in which Yuri Lotman's semiosis plays an important part. People interpret this kind of using language in modern poetry as "the art for the sake of the art", verbalizing for the sake of verbalizing. But the term 'communion' stresses a different aspect: communion is a means of overcoming loneliness, it creates an illusion of not being alone in this large solitary world. Poets seem to be the most vulnerable solitary humans, since they use this means more extensively than other humans.
Misha: And Yuri Lotman as a holy spirit for this very communion of ours [laughter]. Why not to call our project Lotman communion?
Sorry for interrupting you, Valery.
Valery: It's nothing as I was ending anyway.
Misha: Then I would like to ask Ivan if he has anything to add.
Ivan Fomin: What is interesting for me in this discussion is the issue of inter-subjectivity in semiosis. Can there at all be any semiosis without some form of inter-subjectivity? The notion of synechism proposed by Charles Peirce seems to me particularly useful in this respect, as one of the aspects of synechism is this idea that one must not say «I am altogether myself, and not at all you» (EP 2:2).
In a way, intersubjective phenomena are implied in Ferdinand de Saussure's sémiologie too. At least we can interpret Saussure's idea about language being a "treasure" in the collective consciousness of a community. Does this mean that semiotics in fact necessarily implies the existence of collective selves and collective minds? And then, if we assume that there are such things as collective minds, then what is mind?
If we follow Peirce, it seems that it can be productive to define mind through the reference to the category of semiosis, as "there cannot be thought without signs" (CP 4.551). Conversely, any semiosis, in a way, is an intersubjective process, as it always requires at least two "quasi-minds", even if it is a dialogue between a "momentary self" and a "better considered self" (SS 195).
So, if for semiosis there have to exist inter-subjective collective minds or at least multiple intra-subjective quasi-minds, then what does this imply for our understanding of how minds, selves, and consciousness work in general? This question seems particularly important.
Misha: Thank you, very well. Are there any reactions from Kalevi or Ludmilla at this point? Or if not, I can proceed. Kalevi?
Kalevi: Well, you started from the dialogues between hemispheres. That was extremely important for Juri Lotman in a certain period. He was studying the paradoxical aspects of dialogue for quite evident reasons. At the time of 1970s and 1960s the intellectual atmosphere of the Soviet Union was overshadowed by a problem. Intellectuals had a conflict between formal logic and dialectic logic. Both were very strong and elaborate. The problem was how to join those two. It was not clear. That is a sort of a background problem here.
Now, Lotman is studying a paradox and gets to untranslatability which is the source of making meaning, ultimately. But here what I would like to point out, it is that if one tries modelling of dialogue as such, using cybernetic models, then it is always possible to show that there is no contradiction. It becomes lost due to presuppositions of formalization.
Though the contradiction appears when we see the dialogue as something that is going on in simultaneity. That means the paradox requires that the statements exist together at the same time, not in a sequence as communication is modelled cybernetic-wise, when the first one says something, then it wires through a channel to another in a sequential way, and so on - then there is no true contradiction.
True contradiction and paradox appear just when two say something together and this exists for the interpreter simultaneously, and because of that it does not fit. That paradoxical simultaneity is the subjective present or now, what we have all the time as living persons. But how to explain it becomes the problem anyhow. I think that is truly where semiotics starts - as the science of being in simultaneity.
It is interesting to add temporal aspects explicitly to this discussion. It is not so often done in this way.
Lotman sees the problem very nicely. After all, for him that is the relationship between the text and the picture. The picture is simultaneous, and the text is sequential, and paradox appears when you try to translate one to another. If we get this interpreted - that these two major kinds of semiotic systems as text which is also sequential and picture which is given simultaneously - intepreted in terms of time, then it adds a way to go on from these Lotman's ideas.
Misha: Very strong, Kalevi. I have a couple of reactions to what you said, and I would start with the thing which struck me at first. I find some tension in the March seminar of 1981 between the communicative system and signal system. It wasn't explicitly expressed by Lotman, but it was present there. And I think one of the ways you could explain the cybernetics and semiotics tension.
Then the problem of sequential and simultaneous, in my view, is not a problem of text and picture. It is rather a complementarity of what we see and feel, what is actually happening as we all participate now in this very dialogue, for example. I am speaking, but you are participating and reproducing it in your own way. You are disagreeing or agreeing. It's all happening on all the seven screens. It's a simultaneous process, but clearly divided (and shared) by all the participants. The problem is whether it's a mirror-like process, whether the speaker is active and others are reactive, or it is actually different. I think the
other participants are also active. It is not only because it depends on how you're listening. Now I see Kalevi smile and immediately react although he is not saying a word. True, I am doing all the verbiage, but all the other and more important things we are doing simultaneously. I think that this issue is extremely important, but still grossly underestimated. This is the topic I am pushing all the time. It gives me chance to turn again to languaging.
By the way, it is the same with one of the examples Lotman used at the seminar. He mentioned Rousseau's treatise on origins of language. In that book Rousseau interprets mother and child relationship and the kind of languages they use. Whether it is the ordinary human language, or baby's languaging, or something merge of both. And Lotman developed a very important interpretation. His comments correspond to my vision of languaging.
From this point of view languaging with all those constituent parallel processes are simultaneous in fact. That creates lots of problems, of course. Since they are temporarily organized, we cannot avoid sequencing ongoing processes, somehow sequencing all the parallel activities of participants. Probably, that is not a process itself, but it is a result. At least that is how it is being often interpreted in languaging literature. This is an additional result, the back translation, when you are using different semiotic systems, not only verbal but also body language, visual, and so forth, and they develop simultaneously but are all sequenced. Otherwise, it would be impossible to organize all those hectic practices into a single meaningful process. That sequencing is the most straightforward way of organizing. Recurrence or recursion is also another crucial devise.
Kalevi: In a way, sequencing starts from just establishing differences, by distinguishing one from another. But to understand differences, or to utilize them, you should process them simultaneously. You only understand that length of a sequence, what you can grasp in one moment... I know Ludmila has much to say about that.
Ludmilla: Yes, indeed I have something to say about this, but first of all, I'd like to thank you for inviting me here, for it is a great discussion you are having. It is a great opportunity to make something new or important in linguistics or semiotics. As Ivan mentioned, this has a lot to do with shared mind etc. with the in-depth subjectivity. He said that this leads to the redefinition of what we see as the mind.
At the same time, this leads us to the redefinition of what we mean by language and languaging. The term languaging was invented by Michael Halliday. I've seen it in your transcript. We still do not have the equivalent translation in many languages. And I am afraid that all the works that have been done within this group about languaging may be associated with pragmatics. Languaging is different from what already has been discussed in the field of pragmatics. So, I'd like to take this opportunity to say something about what we define as languaging, and why it is different from pragmatics, verbal and non-verbal communication, distributed language. What has been said is very important. It is the notion of simultaniety.
I would start with what we mean by language. This is related to biosemiotics and evolution of language, the whole debate started with Chomsky and the book
"Why only us?". There are groups of people thinking language is synechistic. And there is another group of people who think of language as different from other means of communication etc. And there are other groups of people, who would say there is difference with other forms of language. But the notion of languaging might bring some new light into this whole debate, if we decide to redefine language as based on language, it might help approach the language evolution as continuity from other species of communication which happens nonverbally. Because of course, he said that there are some sequences in the human language. And we are more likely to perceive language as sequential because of the whole tradition in linguistics starting (inaudible) more or less. But then as we look through, we will agree, there is something more than just sequences occurring when we are communicating, as you very nicely described. It is all happening simultaneously.
And we are smiling, and we are communicating nonverbally, and all this is happening simultaneously. So, I think this might be one of the most important features when we define languaging and, consequently, what we mean by languages. Just as in French semiology, some of the scholars like to say that a picture or a piece of art is a thousand texts, and they were criticized. Maybe we can really find what we mean by text, when it is understood as not to sound non linguistically, but non sequentially. So, I think we can connect all these pieces with some current research, and with some old terms of semiotics, and with the Piercean notion of synechism, it all very nicely comes together.
Misha: Very good, thanks. Just a technical remark. I would like to remind you that Bob Hodge mentioned at our debate that it was Holiday who invented the term languaging. But since our last discussion there has been some communication between several people involved. I sent a letter to Paul Thibault, another Australian, a person very much involved in both traditions - SFL and languaging research. Paul actually co-authored a book with Michael. Paul made very valuable comments on the origin of the term. He provided evidence on its origin in British linguistics, somewhat earlier that Michael.
At some point, Stephen Cowley joined the exchange. He revealed that history of this term is much longer, and its first recorded instance goes to the end 16th century. He cited a great British educator Richard Mulcaster who used this word. So, it seems that the term languaging have quite a long history. There were other important instances in philosophy, in linguistics, with the help of some colleagues, I managed to detect somewhat of dozen publications coming from different places.
It is important that languaging is often discussed, using other terms of reference. Thus, Yuri Lotman is coherently discussing the problem of languaging without using the term.
In other languages there are used alternative terms. It is well known that Umberto Maturana referred to the phenomenon, using the word el lengajear.
Valery reminded us last time of German word Versprachlichung. With his help, I tried to identify how this word was used by German-speaking people. We all know that not only Germans speak German. Austrians, Swiss and many others 74
do. So, it seems, it also has quite a long history. In German's tradition it's not so much linguistic but philosophical promotion both of the idea and the term. Thus, Jurgen Habermas coined famous expression "the languaging of the Sacral" (die Versprachlichung des Sakralen). It is the title of the concluding third para in the fifth chapter of the second volume of his magnum opus. This catchphrase is quite prominent in social philosophy and German intellectual discourse.
Another example. This time I refer to Max Weber. He never used the word Versprachlichung but he developed an idea of processual integration of people's assorted activities and used a very similar lingual form. In fact, he created two basic sociological terms - die Versgesellschaftung and die Vergemeinschaftung. They refer to building of society and community. In his "Economy and society" (Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft), in the first chapter there is a big section on die Versgesellschaftung and die Vergemeinschaftung - just as one of foundations of his whole magnificent construction. Max Weber conceptualizes paradoxical interaction of continuity, and sequencing, and all that in social interaction in the broadest sense. Thus, Versprachlichung is just a constituent of the initial Vergemeinschaftung and further Versgesellschaftung.
They are always changing, and this is a constant process of reshaping them, and that is what he meant by Versgesellschaftung. It never finishes. This goes counter to most of the common lore in political science. Unfortunately, my colleagues are insisting that institutions are there, and regimes also exist like a kind of things. They claim they must be accepted as they are, while they are always changing and inconstant.
Sorry for this long incursion but I will try to put this down and some facts and mention them briefly. I try to circulate this information starting with Richard Mulcaster. Hope it may be helpful.
Okay, any further comments?
Kalevi: I do not know what your plans are, where to move, but I'll comment briefly on one idea. You use the term language in a very broad sense to include all kinds of communication, and Lotman also did the same. But when we make some typology, like Tom Sebeok wants to say, lets use the term language for that type of communication that is using a particularly symbolic reference - the characteristics for human language - and then let's ask what consequences that type of system will introduce into a semiosphere.
One consequence that we can see clearly is that instability would grow enormously, and that instability comes from the fact that that type of sign is ungrounded, while iconic and indexical signs are grounded in contrast to symbolic signs, which are not grounded and can be purely conventional. Symbolic ungroundedness is a source of incredibly rich variety of instabilities. The symbolic language introduces instabilities. This leads to some very important problems to understand how sustainability is possible in such systems.
Semiotic take on the question of sustainability will be important. Semiotics can contribute to the problem of sustainability in this way. I think there is something to do because the unsustainability in culture is semiotic, therefore you cannot solve this problem only by natural scientific tools. I think this is related
to Lotman, of course, because he described the instability that is there in binary systems and how to solve this via a move to ternary systems, which says that in the ternary system the stability of semiosis is much higher, so this is one take, and I think, we can go much further from here.
Misha: Yes Kalevi, it is a great idea, I extremely like it. But my reaction is that we all know from our own experience that culture and those semiotic processes that we think are not grounded are sustainable, but the problem is how? Not being grounded but still sustainable, and I have a guess, this is simultaneity, which you mentioned at the very beginning.
Since all those processes are happening simultaneously our communion interaction is somehow working as a kind of stabilizer. In this case, something we do not consider is being grounded, some specific, very specific personal experiences which I don't know, what we're are using whether feelings, experiences, etc. They become a substitute for grounding and then, in case there is a miscommunication, somebody is speaking and I am not able to react. Then unsustainability is becoming evident. But if I am reacting, I somehow stabilize the whole thing.
Yesterday we had a class with our students, and it was annoying because you have black squares instead of faces of people to show on the screen. After all, when I am lecturing, I need their reaction. I do not have this grounding for speaking which is very obvious for distant learning in which we are practicing in the period of the Covid pandemic.
It's a blessing, in a way, if you have a small circle and nobody has a problem, but if it's a big lecture with empty black boxes then everything goes wrong or problematic. So, you may grasp a few faces you see to feel adequate in communicating. So, this is absolutely a new direction of research and a very promising one what Kalevi has commented.
Sergey and Ivan, do you want to add something?
Sergey: I want to speak about the nature of dialogue and address some remarks of Kalevi on this question. In my opinion, any person has special kinds of mental processes, and each of these processes exists simultaneously and intersect only in the commune of people. If we want to describe it scientifically, then we need to consider the mechanisms of synchronization of mental and physiological processes, for example, synchronization of breathing, synchronization of heartbeat, movement of legs and arms (as when rowing on crew boats). In this case, there may be an unconscious memory of the learned rhythms of another person. These are all means of understanding a person by a person.
Another aspect is conformity and the significance of distance between people in situations of conformity. This is very interesting because I agree with such thoughts of mechanism that determines our understanding, but what is surprising for me is that in distance learning I saw the creation of this mechanism too. I wrote a little paper about the subject.
Misha: Could you share this paper with us?
Sergey: Yes.
Misha: Great, excellent. Ivan, you wanted to add something.
Ivan: It seems that this drive to the communion is strong enough to overcome all the limitations of COVID.
Misha: Besides we are having kind of holy communion with Lotman [laughter]
Ivan: In a way, that is something I wanted to talk about. I guess simultaneity is very important but also the aspect of reoccurrence that manifests in the habits (including inter-subjective habits). How can we connect these aspects: intersubjectivity, simultaneity, and habit? The important concept here is the concept of contemporaneity which, in a way, broadens the window of simultaneity in social semiosis.
If we consider Lotman, for instance, I share some time with Lotman in simultaneity, but I was 6 years old when he died, and this means I could not have any discussion or dialogue with him in person. However, to a degree, Lotman and I share a contemporaneity, and thereby I still can communicate with him. But for that we have to have some shared habits, as, ultimately, without such habits contemporaneity ruptures. Moreover, without such common habits even strictly simultaneous presence is not enough to enable communication. (Another way of looking at this is from the point of view of Husserl's account of shared idealizations of reoccurrence ("one-can-always-again" idealizations) that are central for social phenomenology.)
Misha: Great idea. By the way, Ivan, I think in some way you reacted to what Kalevi said about desynchronization and destabilization and so on. A lack of grounding and habits are also a source of grounding, even when you are lost, you can simply do this elementary trick again and again then you start to feel that you are getting more secure and stabilized.
Sergey: In this connection I want to say that social institute is pragmatic of the name of the social institute.
Misha: Can you develop it, please? I think it is a very promising idea.
Sergey: It's about habitat. If we have words for the repeating activity, in this situation we have a social institute and we have a special (symbolic) name for define behavior in this situation that named a social institute.
Misha: Very interesting, you have to give a lecture to my colleagues who are discussing institutionalism as they have very different opinions, and some are not even.
Sergey: There is this paper about the subject I mentioned.
Misha: Okay guys, any further comments?
Sergey: I have a question for Valery and Kalevi. We've spoken about commune and communication as an opposition. How does commune exist in the German language? Karl Jaspers uses communication in places when I thought he was talking about the commune.
Misha: Valery how do Germans call the holy communion? There should be an ecclesiastical term.
Sergey: No communication.
Valery: The direct equivalents are 'die heilige Kommunion', 'das heilige Abendmahl' but Malinowski meant what is called in German 'das Zusammensein'
("being together"), 'Gemeinschaft' or even 'Gesellschaft' ("society" or "presence"). All of these terms contain the ideas of intercourse, of contact and of face-to-face communication.
Sergey: I asked many people who are German language experts, but they couldn't answer my question.
Valery: The term 'Zusammensein' is the best candidate. The situation here resembles the German expressions 'Guten Appetit', 'Mahlzeit' and the French 'bon appétit' used as politeness formulae of phatic communion without direct equivalents in English.
Misha: It is very heuristic.
Sergey: But it has only one sense.
Misha: Yes, but there may be several. In this case I am using this one as a term of departure.
Kalevi: Maybe we should recall here the term that Jakob von Uexkull and Konrad Lorenz used - that of Kumpan.
Valery: The German 'Kameradschaft' means a friendly atmosphere, camaraderie. This is why the definition of 'phatic communion' mentions the idea of atmosphere.
Mikhail: Cameraderie?
Valery: Camaraderie is a borrowing from French, though.
Misha: It's good that we practice language games, Sprachspiele. What about coupling them with forms of life, Lebensformen.
Ivan: On the topic of grounding, I guess sharing bread is a nice way to show that there is some material grounding behind maybe even social semiotics.
Valery: For an English speaker 'communion' is a common word because of religion. As well as for Germans. But for Russian speakers it does not belong to everyday language even in religious families.
Misha: Everyone thinks England is homogenous religion-wise, but they have a lot of Catholics in some parts. There are several Anglican churches and other protestant denominations. In a broader context, Britain Scots have their alternative kirks - one is Scots Kirk or an equivalent of High Church, but also the so-called Free Kirk, Unitit Free Kirk and other specific Scottish protestant denominations. Britain is very diverse religion-wise. To my ear the word communion sounds like rather charged with overtones of Catholicism or religious traditionalism at least.
Kalevi: I feel Lotman's spirit in this and with us. I now need to rush to my next task. It is great what this seminar is doing.
Misha: Let us create a name for this group and call it Lotman's communion.
Good luck Kalevi. See you next Monday if you manage it on Lotman's day.
We have nothing more specific to discuss straight away. We can continue on Monday. I suggest that at this juncture we can call it a day. What do you think? Unless you want to say something right now.
Meanwhile I promise to do the following: make notes on the history of the words languaging, Versprachlichung and el lenguajear. This is another term 78
invented by Umberto Maturana. There is also the Russian term oH3birnenenue (oiazykovlenie). I suggest Ludmilla think about a possible Czech term, or a Slovak one. I am thinking about something like zajazykovani, but do not know if it might work for Czechs. In addition, I will circulate this unedited transcript of Lotman's seminar.
Sergey: Will you discuss languaging or semiosing?
Misha: That is a good idea, let's discuss it next time. That could be other terms when you are speaking about borderline language, visual language, picturing. Mulcaster uses the word languaging only once, but when he refers to the practice itself in his Perlocution - quite an impressive title - he used other terms, e.g. quite consistently the word penning. He uses it quite often, may be a dozen times. It is understandable. He was a headmaster and an educator who wrote about the advancement of the English language. His whole text is dedicated to the advancement of English. He considers the habits of writing as essential for developing personal lingual capacities of his pupils and Englishmen at large. From this point, he was focused on penning rather than languaging as such.
There is another possible equivalent or synonym - semiotising or semiosing, suggested by Sergey. Thank you, Sergey. It is a bright idea.
Sergey: What do you want to discuss? I would like to understand. Semiozing or semiotising.
Misha: Semiosing or both. If languaging is used in a very broad sense, semiosing could be a term.
Valery: May I add a remark on the use of 'languaging'? In my large corpus of English texts, I only found it once in the 17th century. Other usages may be seen only in the 20th century highbrow texts or in dictionaries, e.g. in Webster 1913. The oldest occurrence is found in the book by Richard Lovelace (1618 - 1657), an English poet, whose name is sometimes spelled 'Loveless' and means "lady-killer":
" A new warre e're while arose 'Twixt the GREEKES and LATINES, whose Temples should be bound with glory In best languaging this story: You, that with one lovely smile A ten-yeares warre can reconcile; Peacefull Hellens awfull see The jarring languages agree, And here all armes laid by, they doe Meet in English to court you." (Richard Lovelace, Lucasta).
In this quotation, the word 'languaging' means staging a story, finding proper words and an optimal composition of a story, previously existing or just being in statu nascendi, emerging. That is, verbalizing and not simply inventing a fabula.
Misha: On Monday we will begin with lexicographic exercises of ours, related to histories of different words. Then we can experiment with new wordings. That is a good idea.
So, the first half-hour of our meeting on Monday then we will proceed further.
Ivan: It seems that Ludmilla wants to add something.
Ludmila: Yes, thank you. I will leave my further comment for Monday. But I just want to comment on penning as an alternative for languaging. For me as a linguist it is very interesting because of two reasons. The first is obvious. It is interesting for the creative word construction like the derivation of verbs from nouns which expresses instruments. Pen is an instrument for writing which is transformed into the action word of what we do with pens. Penning. I like it.
The second reason why this is interesting is the choice of "pen" rather than any other instrument because it leads to the fact that languaging is associated with modality or the medium. For Mulcaster maybe it was not important, if we were discussing written or spoken language, which is why he could interchange language with penning. This is much deeper than it seems.
I don't know if you are familiar with the works of Jacques Derrida as a grammatologist. I am currently reading the book, and it's been on my mind. It has a lot to do with our discussion. He deals with writing systems as preceding language. We already discussed the problem of sequences and language being sequential which is just a limit for expressing our ideas and it's because of our language. As we understand it's phenological or sequential, but like the alphabet is the consequence of phenological understanding of language, not its cause so it is reversed.
Writing is not based on this alphabetical phenological language but rather writing in a very broad sense as we understand language. He is inspired by Egyptian Hieroglyphs or Chinese characters, which are perceived simultaneously and not read letter by letter but fully, so this is interesting to me as well. This author, I am inspired by, is also using penning which I think can be related to the reader and our understanding of language as dissociated from the medium.
Misha: Extremely interesting, and I think this could also be writing systems, be it hieroglyphs or idiographic generally. This goes very well with the idea that Ivan expressed about habits, but not only with languaging but habituating could be a kind of experimental concept, as that is what is happening in politics or economy when developing practices of exchange even technologically. A famous example by Wittgenstein of two workers putting bricks together and explaining what is happening. It can be interpretated as habituating, not just language game.
Sergey: Habitus is a very important category in biological typology.
Ivan: I think the concept of sharing is very important here as we have to share time with simultaneity, we have to share habits and we have to share instruments like pens or the images or the bread we share.
Misha: I was thinking about it when Ivan was talking about contemporaneity. I have a great example, since this time scale could be very much extended, there is a case in anthropology, a term behavioural modernity. Just imagine what it means. It refers to what happened to Homo Sapiens Sapiens about 50,000 years ago when they started to speak. They also started to make graves and put flowers on them. And take pictures and all that about 50,000 years ago. So anthropologists called it behavioural modernity to note that early humans became like us not only from the point of view of their bodies but also their behavioural patterns. Just like us! It was since then we share the same simultaneity.
Let's call it a day, guys. Thank you, dear colleagues. I am looking forward to Monday's discussion.
