1. Notes from Language Unit Language as a WOK

2. Saussure, signifier, and signified: Sign= signifier (i.e. ‘cat’) + signified (the actual cat) Signifier: The sound-image (or word-image) that acts as the finger pointing to the signified Signified: The signified is the concept, the meaning, the thing indicated by the signifier. It need not be a 'real object' but is some referent to which the signifier refers. “Saussure's ideas are contrary to Plato's notion of ideas being eternally stable. Plato saw ideas as the root concept that was implemented in individual instances. A signifier without signified has no meaning, and the signified changes with person and context. For Saussure, even the root concept is malleable.” “The relationship between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary (Saussure called this 'unmotivated'). A real object need not actually exist 'out there'. Whilst the letters 'c-a-t' spell cat, they do not embody 'catness'. The French 'chat' is not identical to the English 'cat' in the signified that it creates (to the French, 'chat' has differences of meaning). In French, 'mouton' means both 'mutton' and a living 'sheep', whilst the English does not differentiate.” “Saussure inverts the usual reflectionist view that the signifier reflects the signified: the signifier creates the signified in terms of the meaning it triggers for us. The meaning of a sign needs both the signifier and the signified as created by an interpreter. A signifier without a signified is noise. A signified without a signifier is impossible.” Info from changingminds.org; images from visual-memory.co.uk

3. Chomsky & Pinker: Language Instinct Language is an instinct for humans like weaving a web is an instinct for spiders Grammar is instinctive; otherwise why would babies make mistakes they don’t hear spoken, such as: “We goed to the store?”

4. Foucault: Language and Power Language is infused with power (inescapably so); “It is a question of what governs statements, and the way in which they govern each other so as to constitute a set of propositions that are scientifically acceptable and, hence, capable of being verified or falsified by scientific procedures. In short, there is a problem of the regime, the politics of the scientific statement” (Foucault 145) Power permeates our social language—we are always caught in the power language produces (Stopped here 11/6)—discuss presentations first 11/11 Discursive regimes operate differently at different times in history There is no a-priori subject (rejection of Descartes’ ‘I think therefore I am’); we must “account for the constitution of knowledges, discourses, domains of objects, and so on, without having to make reference to a subject that is either transcendental in relation to the field of events or runs in its empty sameness throughout the course of history” (Foucault 150) Quotations from The Chomsky-Foucault Debate on Human Nature, 2006

5. Foucault: Language and Power “The important thing here, I believe, is that truth isn’t outside or lacking in power…. Truth is a thing of this world: it is produced only by virtue of multiple forms of constraint. And it induces regular effects of power. Each society has its regime of truth, its ‘general politics’ of truth—that is, the types of discourse it accepts and makes function as true; the mechanisms and instances that enable one to distinguish true and false statements; the means by which each is sanctioned; the techniques and procedures accorded value in the acquisition of truth; the status of those who are charged with saying what counts as true” (Foucault 168) Quotations from The Chomsky-Foucault Debate on Human Nature, 2006

6. Derrida and deconstruction: Words always refer to other words in order to build their concepts Meaning in language, therefore, is always deferred—we cannot pin it down precisely EX: tree/tall/wood/phloem/bark/root/branch/ long/diverging/away… See handout on Derrida Homework (for Fri.): read pp. 32-43 in TOK Course companion, do creative writing