I did not quite understand Mary's explanation of Hayakawa's signifigant usage of the word "only." Could someone please clarify this paragraph for me?
I also think that by 'only' Hayakawa meant that this sort of situation is common in our language. Take, for example, someone who takes care of a sports team by getting water, towels, etc. Are they a manager or an errand boy? As you can see, both words give a different feeling, but have the same extensional meaning.
Thank you!
In addition to the A-town and B-ville confusion, I stumbled upon something else that struck my attention.
"But as we know from everyday experience, learning language is not simply a matter of learning words; it is a matter of correctly relating our words to the things and happenings for which they stand" (Hayakawa 86).
Does this not completely contradict Hayakawa's lesson in Book One that symbols are completely and totally independent of what they are symbolizing due to each person's unique extensional and intensional experiences?
Clarification is greatly appreciated.
(Samantha Maliha)
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3 comments:
I believe that Hayakawa's lesson in Book One is not that symbols are completely independent of what they are symbolizing, but rather that they are two distinct entities. Though he does seem fond of saying that the two are independent, he also mentions:
The symbol is not the thing symbolized; the word is not the thing; the map is not the territory it stands for. (19)
Just as he makes the point that the symbols of virtues such as piety and patriotism are valued above the actual virtues themselves,(18) Hayakawa proves that we often confuse the two entities. It is hard to imagine that the symbol and the symbolized are completely unrelated - utterly independent of one another. Due to our different semantic backgrounds, we may have different connotations that come to mind when perceiving a symbol, but aren't we still thinking of the same thing (The symbolized)? Whether we think "dirty" or "cute" upon hearing the word "pig", aren't we all still thinking of the animal? Despite the variations in perception, the true extensional meaning of the word remains the same in everyone's minds.
I'm not sure if that made sense or not. I do realize that Hayakawa does explicitly state that the two entities are, in fact, "independent" of one another. However I'm not sure that he meant that no relationship existed between them. Any further thoughts?
Tiffany Yuan
Under my interpretation, the word is inherently independent from the thing, however...
Going back to a post I made a while ago, I wrote that even if there is no inherent connection between the symbol and what it represents, hasn't a connection between the two grown over time just due to common usage?
Maybe symbols do not have any intrinsic or fundamental connection to what they represent, but over time a link might have developed based upon people's perceptions.
So perhaps the symbol and the object that it represents are independent but still connected. There's no particular reason that "apple pie" symbolizes patriotism, but over time we have come to associate the two. A connection has been formed, right?
Regarding Sam's question about this quote:
"But as we know from everyday experience, learning language is not simply a matter of learning words; it is a matter of correctly relating our words to the things and happenings for which they stand." (Hayakawa 86).
I don't think this quote contradicts Hayakawa's lesson that the word is not the thing. Maybe if I could modify the second part of Hayakawa's quote to clarify:
"...it is a matter of correctly relating our words to the things and happenings for which we have agreed that they stand."
We have to know what people are referring to when they speak ("correctly relating our words to the things..."), as when I say "apple" you know I'm referring to the fruit. But that doesn't necessarily mean that the five letters that compose "apple" have an intrinsic connection to the red fruit.
Any word could have symbolized that deliciously juicy red fruit and it was just a coincidence that "apple" does, as there is no inherent connection between the word and the thing. However, in conversation we still need to know that when I say "apple", I'm referring to the fruit.
We need to know the informative connotations of words, even if the word is not the thing.
Further thoughts? (and yes, I do like apples.)
I feel that sometimes even though we need to know the informative connotations of a word, it sometimes makes this language more confusing and gives people all these misunderstandings.
I am going to use the dictionary for an example. As Hayakawa states, the dictionary is not a lawgiver, and yet, many people still believe it to be so because they think that knowing the informative connotation is the most important thing. This sort of misunderstanding leads to more misunderstandings. For example, a foreigner may know from studies that an 'apple' is a red fruit, but what happens when someone refers to 'seeing the big apple'. There is no informative connotation of this in the dictionary (although i may be wrong), causing the foreigner (who now thinks that the person really saw a huge fruit) to have a misunderstanding.
(mary quien)
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