прагматика и медиа дискурс / 语用学关键概念 Key Notions for Pragmatics (2009)

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Communication

Peter Harder

Univeristy ofCopenhagen

1.Language and communication

In the widest sense. the noun comnumicntiott and the verb from which it is derived covervirtuallyanyformofinteractionbetweenobjects, asinlinesofcommrmit:ation and commu11icating vessels.senseswhich directly reflect theLatin rootcommwtis, 'common' or'shared'. However, thecorearea (which is the one that constitute..s a coherentsubject ofinterest) is the t)rpe ofinteraction which prototypically involves thetransmission of messages between individuals actingconsciously and intentionally for that end.

Thisnarrowersense,\'lhich isalso theoldestfor the word in English hastradition· all}'been understood intermsofaneven narrower privileged form ofcommunication. based on acommon system ofsymbols.i.e., alanguage (cf..e.g.• the definitionin Ency· clopedia Britmwica Onli,e). Thespecial statusgranted to communication by meansof language isdueto the special status ofhuman language in the tradition because ofits association with logic and propositional thinking and that in turn mustbe wlderstood in terms ofthat traditional bias in Western culture which accords automatic. primacy to the subject ofphilosophically grounded kllowledgeofthe world. In this context, the primaryroleoflanguage istorepresent theworldaccurately.andseriouscommunication is understood to consist in the communication ofsuch representations.

The existence ofother forms of communication has always been recognized, of course, but it \'JaS not until this century that they ceased to be regarded as inherently

inferior.Thechangecame from anumberofdifferentsources. The central philosophical development is due to the late vVittgenstein according to whom ltmgunge games types

ofinteractionanchored in formsoflife.are theultimate.non·representational sourcesof meaning. \oVhen meaning isbasically understood as use in interaction:commumcation can no longer be understood basically in termsof•transport ofpropositional itJformn· tion: The anthropologicalperspectiveon meaning,aspointed outbyMalinowski ( 1923). highlights the same point, underlining the fundamental connection between under· standing languageand understanding the sharedactionthat it is used tochannel.

Jn this broader perspective, understanding communication always involves two elements. Conmmnication is a form of action. and as such its nature is to change the world rather than merely reflect it; understanding therefore means understanding what the other person is doing. first of all. But because it is communication (rather than food-seekingor mating)the change itseeks to bringaboutalso involvesachange

of informatiorli state: understanding therefore also involves understanding what the other person Lc;: saying.

The precise relationship between what is said and what is done may vary greatly, and historicall}' it has not proved a simple matter to do justice to both sides simulta­ neously. One of the difficulties is that in terms of the ·event' perspective, what is said is part of what is done and is therefore subordinate to the overall action whereas in terms of the traditional focus on propositional information, the •thought content' is conceived as abstracted from accidental circumstances, which :renders most of the event irrelevant. Going from one aspect to the other therefore typically involves not only a figure-ground reversal but also a conflict of conceptual frarne,o; both of which are serious obstacles to integrating the two aspects into one whole picture. The whole discipline ofpragmatics is in a senseconstrued on the basis of this geological faultline as will be evident in several places below.

2.Communication in an evolutionary perspective

When explicit, linguistic. propositional communication is no longer the }'ardstick on the basis of which eveq•thing else should be understood, but some1hing rather special, the question arises of how to understand its specific position within the larger picture. One overall framework in which it has become natural to view human language as well as communication is that of evolutionary biolog}'.

In describing the specific nature ofcommunication \\'ithin that wider picture, one basic problem is how to delimit communication satisfactorily from non-conununicative interaction. The issue is made difficult by the conflicting ontological commitments that enter into the discussion. In talking about the genetic code: a metaphor that may be taken more or Jess literally in the approach known as •&iosemiotics' (cf. Hoffmeyer 1996; Semiotica Vol 127: l, 1999), one is licensing an assumption that biological pro­ cesses down to the cellular level may involve emission and reception of signs. If that is assumed. it is difficult to distinguish between communicative and non-communicative forms of interaction between biological entities.

I shall assume, however, that there is a possible distinctior between messages and other forms of impact, hence that communication is a privilege of beings with a form of mental life. This position faces the problem that there is no empil'icaJ wa}' of telling exactly 'lvhat animals or what types ofinteraction are covered by the definition.

1lte tune-honoured practice of imposing an anthropomorphic interpretation on the animal world is difficult to get rid of. since it is true even among human beings that ultimately the only way of understanding communicative activity is by 'identification: i.e., by using what comes into your own mind as a guide to what is going on in the minds of others (as regulated by what Freud called the 'reality checlk'). Thus, we cannot

64P ter Harder

help but see a caterpillaJ· exposing a garishly coloured behind as trying to 'scare' th observer, etc.

Since we have no way of knowing if anything of the kind is actually going on1 mainstream research recognizes a methodological principle of caution according to which scientists should assume no more complexity than warranted by the need to provide an adequate account ofwhat goes on. The distinction, therefore, between what is truly communicative and what is interaction without a separable 'message: must remain vague from an empirical point of view, however essential it is in principle {cf. also Searle 1992). We have to make do with the definition. with its presupposed association between consciousnes in some form and intentionality in some form

sidestepping the empirical issue in all problematic cases.

Communication thus conceived requires animals with mental powers sufficient to represent states of the world (however rudimentary those represemntions may be) to themselves. Only animals with such powers can act as recipients of messages. and until there are potential recipients around, acting as a sender does not make much sense. For such animals, we may distinguish between two ways ofgetting itiformntiolf: one involves only a relation between the individual and the external world; the other involves a relation with the external world that goes via input from another animal The latter kind is what is of interest here: whenever another animal serves as a source of information in that particular way which is interestingly different from the way all other parts of the external world serve as sources of information, we have an instance ofcommunication.

[n an evolutionary perspective, the logical way to approach communication is by starting with simple, pre-communicative phenomena and then move towards mor complex cases. Clear examples of pre-communicative behaviour are cases which give rise to inferences Ytithout being functionally associated with this signalling effect, such as deviation from normal behaviour caused by injurywhich is treated as interesting information b)' predators, but means 'injured animal' in the same wholly natural sense that the smell of putrefaction means 'dead animal'.

Closer to communication we find behaviours which are functionally hooked up with the behaviour of other animals, such as mating behaviour or the co-ordinated behaviours of insect societies. Such behaviours can be understood as communicative if we attribute powers of representation to their recipient but the methodological principle of caution means that in the absence ofevidence to the contrary. we should treat thern assimplytriggersofcertain forms ofbehaviour. Thus. an insect that is begin· ning to perform mating behaviour is presumably not commwlicating a rnessagt"

it is simply starting to mate. The word 'commumcation' comes naturally when you try to describe co-ordjnated behaviour that serves no other function than to trigger co-ordinated behaviour in othersi but what is shared does not have to be a message

it may simply be behaviour as such. The function of the behaviour. in terms ofsurvival

Commurllcation 6S

value. is in the overall benefit that a group ofanimals gains from entering in the kind ofinteraction that is made possible by the triggering behaviours.

Communication (according to the restrictive definition adopted above) onlystarts to occur when there is a twofold event involved such that 'brute' behaviour becomes clearlydistinct from a message that is associated with that behaviour. This occurs in the case of•dtspla)' in the sense ofAJh,•ood (1976: 74), where a sender manifests a certain behaviour with the intention of making this behaviour known. This is a plausible 'stage zero' ofcommunication: there is both an act and a message, but the sender is •saying' and 'doing' the same thing, as it were. As their owners will know. dogs are plausible candidates for this ability, as manifested when they want to be taken out fora walk.

A distinctive mark ofdisplay is that it does not depend on 'recog11ition ofintelltiot ': the behaviour forms a vehicle for the message by virtue of its own natural properties. As opposed to this, l take a definition of full-fledged human communication to be captured by Grice's distinction between natural and norHUltural mea11i11g (cf. Grice 1957). Non-natural meaning,ofwhich linguistic meaning isonevariety, is found when the process ofattributing meaning involve recognizing the (complex) intention of a sender: thus in understanding a hand wave as a greeting, I attribute to the sender an intention that I should recognize thehand waveasa greeting otherwise the•greeting' interpretation is out. Natural meaning. in contrast, works without the mediation ofan intentional sender: tl1ose spots mean measles and the reomt budget means tlwt we slwll /rave a hard year (Grice's two illustration exarnples) attribute meaning to certain fea· tures ofthe external world byvirtue oflinks with other features ofthe external world, without depending on the existence of the intentions of senders. 'Natural' mentting thussubsumes all the previous steps described above.

A description in terms of an ascending evoluttotwry scale is at risk of being understood to mean that previous steps are discarded along the way. As in evolu­ tion general!)', this is a misunderstanding; actual communicative behaviour typically involves all the phenomena described above (more on that in the section on human comnmnication below). 'Tlle natural context ofthe evolution ofcommunication is the existence ofsocial groups whose survival may be enhanced by the kind ofenrichment ofthe 'naturally' available infonnation that is created by communication; and types of such enrichment are likely to haveoccurred in small instalments.

One o(the types ofsignal that havebeen intensivelystudied is alarm calls ofsocial animals. \>Vith these) one can set up a simple scenario for how non-natural meaning gradually may become superimposed upon natural meaning: an animal that hears a scream of pain from a conspecitic will 'naturally' infer danger; a sound en"'itted in anticipation of pain will serve the same purpose; and whether the sound is caused purely by the perception ofdanger or it is a case of'display'. the sound serves to aug­ ment the sources ofinformation available. thus protecting all members of the group. A step above simple display occurs when alarm calls go beyond expressing alarm in

revolution around 1960, the focus changed from communication to cognition, and the question became, •to what extent can mathematical and computational processes emulate mental abilities?" At t])at point 'information' takes over as tJ)e central concept. rather than 'communication:

Following up this discussion would take us beyond the scope of this article; but one major result of the discussion about the 'simulation' paradigm should be pointed out since it applies to communication as well as to information. Pragmatically speaking, the mathematical properties of commumcation processes and information states are relevant as wa)'S of capturing structural complexity in commumcation and cognition but one should be careful not to generalize from structure to ontolog)'· 1llis holds for the same reasons that are emphasized in Seam·le's critique of 'strong AJ' in terms ofthe 'Chinese room' (cf. Searle 1980, 1992): combinatorial complexity does not automatically translate into understanding. And in a pragmatic context, comrnunica· tion as conceived without invohring understanding is not offocal interest.

4.Human communication

Non natural meaning as defined b)' Grice depends on what is known as 'theory of mitUf. i.e., tl1e ability to attribute communicative intentions to the sender and take this into account in understanding the message. To what extent non·human animals possess this ability is controversial (cf., e.g.• Tomasello & Call 1997). Conceivably, all non·human communication is mediated by ttaturnl meaning. working by virtue of adaptations to naturally occurring features ofthe world,and only human communication is mediated by specific assumptions about the sender as a fellow communicator.

This once again gives human communication a special place, but in a rather dif· ferent manner than the traditional distinction based on logical and propositional information. The special human properties. according to this approach. are in the kind of intersubjectivity tl1at marks human communicative interaction, in which tl1e mutual attribution ofintention and understanding is crucial; and linguistic communi· cation is not the only kind that has those properties.

One communicative but nonlinguistic system of human communication is geswre, which has been the subject of increasing interest in recent years. A generail)' disparaging attitude to gestural signalling has been replaced by a growing recog· nition that gesture involves most of the high· level features that we associate with language, including not only non-natural meaning (gestures differ across cultures) but also abstractness and metaphoricity. Gesture, moreover, is an integrated feature of that characteristically human communicative behaviour that also includes ian· guage (cL e.g., McNeill 1990); and spoken languages ma}' be seen as an evolutionary extension ofgestural communication (cf. Armstrong. Stokoe & vVikox 1995}.