30.41, Review: English; Cognitive Science; General Linguistics; Philosophy of Language: Kowalewski (2016)

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Subject: 30.41, Review: English; Cognitive Science; General Linguistics; Philosophy of Language: Kowalewski (2016)

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Date: Sat, 05 Jan 2019 14:56:55
From: Conor Snoek [marlow.snoek at gmail.com]
Subject: Motivating the Symbolic

 
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/27/27-5124.html

AUTHOR: Hubert  Kowalewski
TITLE: Motivating the Symbolic
SUBTITLE: Towards a Cognitive Theory of the Linguistic Sign
SERIES TITLE: Sounds - Meaning - Communication
PUBLISHER: Peter Lang AG
YEAR: 2016

REVIEWER: Conor Matten Snoek, University of Lethbridge

SUMMARY

In Motivating the Symbolic: Towards a Cognitive Theory of the Linguistic Sign
(2016), Hubert Kowalewski outlines a theory of motivation in the framework of
Cognitive Linguistics and provides a refinement of the theoretical construct
of the linguistic sign. To build his theory, Kowalewski reviews foundational
concepts of Cognitive Linguistics (henceforth CL) and examines relevant parts
of the semiotic theories of Charles Sanders Peirce and Ferdinand de Saussure.
Kowalewski then puts forth a theory of motivation and applies it in a number
of case studies going from the analysis of individual words to poetic verse.
The book aims to bring about a ''progressive problemshift'' in the technical
discourse on motivation that overcomes difficulties encountered by the older
Saussurean theory. Primarily aimed at Cognitive Linguists, the book should
also be of interest to semioticians, lexical semanticists, and anthropological
linguists.

Chapter 1 offers an overview of Cognitive Linguistics (CL) relying almost
exclusively on the foundational work in Cognitive Grammar by Ronald W.
Langacker, and its elaboration in the work of John Taylor. For the most part,
CL is represented effectively, and this chapter provides a good overview of
the framework touching on some of the theory's central concepts. CL is
compared to generative grammar in order to exemplify the distinctiveness in
the approach of the former. The symbolic relation between phonological form
and semantic form posited in CL is of crucial importance to Kowalewski's
theory. 

Chapter 2 describes the background to a theory of signs in order to lay the
semiotic foundations for the theory of motivation proposed in the subsequent
chapter. Semiotic ideas of Saussure, Peirce, and Langacker are discussed in
turn. The focus is on Saussure's ideas of arbitrariness and motivation.
Saussure admits to relative motivation in morphologically and syntactically
complex constructions, but fails to give onomatopoeia the theoretical
attention it deserves. Kowalewski perceives this failure as a theoretical gap
that his theory can fill. As will be shown below, Kowalewski, in fact, takes
this lacuna to be serious enough to warrant the rejection of the entire
Saussurean theory of linguistic motivation. The next section in the chapter
discusses the semiotic theory of Peirce. Peirce's theory of semiotics is
complex and the discussion of it is by necessity detailed. Kowalewski does not
take into account or refer to previous treatments of Peircean semiotics from a
linguistic perspective (e.g. Pharies 1985). Most of the attention is devoted
to Peirce's indexes and icons, which are elaborated on further in the
following chapter. Finally, Kowalewski describes the model of the linguistic
sign that emerges from the work of Langacker: a dyad of phonological and
semantic poles both situated in conceptual space. Langacker's model is adopted
by Kowalewski for his own theory.

Chapter 3 outlines Kowalewski's theory of motivation. The chapter begins with
a brief overview of Peircean and Saussurean thought on motivation, in order to
lay the groundwork for Kowalewski to develop his own approach. The theory of
motivation is developed in two stages: first, Kowalewski argues that
Saussure's arbitrary/motivated distinction is mistaken. Then, the features of
a new theory of motivation are elaborated. The latter part takes up most of
the sections of this chapter. Saussure's distinction is dealt with, first by
attacking the notion of ‘naturalness’, then by arguing for the abandonment of
the concept of arbitrariness in favour of motivation. Saussure writes of the
lack of a natural connection between signifier and signified (Saussure 2011:
69); there is a very unfortunate typographic error in the relevant section in
Kowalewski's text, page 125, where the opposite is claimed, but presumably not
intended. Kowalewski argues that Saussure leaves the term ‘natural’ as beset
by ''elusiveness'' and vagueness (Kowalewski 2016: 125). Finding this all too
subjective, Kowalewski nonetheless goes on to retain it as a ''good starting
point'' (ibid.) for a definition of motivation. Elaborating further, the term
‘natural’ in Saussure is found to mean ''existing in nature, not caused, made
or controlled by people''. However, Kowalewski then abandons this
interpretation in favour of a reading of ‘natural’ to mean ''as you would
expect''. In this he appears to follow Taylor (2002), who stipulates that for
any native speaker of a language, any form-meaning association found in that
language is expected and hence natural. Kowalewski then claims that everything
that is ‘natural’ is ‘motivated’. It then follows that, since everything in
language is natural or expected from the viewpoint of the native speaker,
everything must also be ‘motivated’. This conclusion renders the term
‘arbitrary’ obsolete, and Kowalewski proposes the term ‘purely conventional’
instead. Conventional relationships between signifier and signified are
expected by native speakers and therefore natural or motivated. Purely
conventional signs are those signs that are motivated by convention and
nothing else. In Kowalewski's theory, ‘conventionality’ is a ''factor of
motivation'' alongside ‘similarity’ and ‘contiguity’.

The chapter then proceeds with a description of the ''Factors of motivation'',
which are ‘similarity’, ‘contiguity’, and ‘conventionality’. Kowalewski's
discussion of similarity in terms of subjective construal is one of the high
points of the book. Here, he successfully integrates Peircean and CL notions
to inform his own approach. This approach is then exemplified further in the
case studies in Chapter 4. The reader is informed that, according to Peirce,
contiguity is an objective relation between the sign and the thing denoted by
the sign that does not depend on ''the interpreting mind'' (Kowalewski 2016:
142). However, instead of delving deeper into the nature of subjective
contiguity, Kowalewski moves on to a discussion of well-trodden examples from
the literature. This analysis would not be a problem in itself if it were not
for the fact that the examples do not help in developing contiguity into an
analytical category.

Ignoring more recent work, such as the important contribution by Peirsman &
Geeraerts (2006), and their published exchange with Croft (2006), Kowalewski
is content merely to state that some relations exhibit contiguity without
elaborating further. The lack of elaboration is unfortunate since a principled
treatment of contiguity, especially if it is of a subjective nature, would
have been of great benefit for research into motivation. In a later section,
Kowalewski does approach this topic by bringing the CL notion of
‘subjectification’ into the discussion. This discussion is a valuable
contribution to the study of motivation, but it is too brief. Kowalewski
devotes just two pages to this innovative aspect of his theory and ultimately
fails to develop something akin to a useful methodological approach. 

 The third type of motivation, ‘conventionality’, is then discussed, drawing
heavily on Langacker (1987). Since Kowalewski has already theorized that all
signs are motivated, even if they are motivated ''purely'' by convention, it
comes as no surprise that convention emerges as ''the most important factor in
motivation'' in the sense of the most commonly occurring – this type of
motivation is, in fact, ubiquitous (Kowalewski 2016: 149). 

 The next section, ''concerted motivation'', deals with the interactions
between the three types of motivation. Along with the discussion of similarity
in motivation and some of the case studies, this section presents some of the
best work in the book. However, the terminological innovations propagated in
the preceding sections reveal themselves to be unhelpful at best. For example,
Kowalewski follows Radden & Kövecses' (1999) proposal to consider the
relationship between the phonological and semantic poles of a sign as an
instance of contiguity. He takes pains to distinguish this type of contiguity
from other types. The first, which could be called contiguity-type-1, is
whatever holds between the phonological and semantic poles of a sign.
Contiguity-type-2 is the one that readers may be more familiar with from
studies of metonymy and holds, for instance, between the semantic entities of
'face' and 'person' in the classic example: ‘the face that launched a thousand
ships’. Given the lack of a definition of contiguity, keeping these two types
of contiguity apart, as well as seeing why they should belong together, is
understandably difficult.

 The chapter ends with a brief illustration of the application of the theory.
More detailed analyses are described in the chapter that follows.

Chapter 4 describes seven case studies applying Kowalewski's theory of
motivation to analyses of English expressions. The case studies consider
examples at different levels of complexity beginning with motivational
processes in words (morphologically simplex and complex) and finishing with
the analysis of poetic language. The case studies analyze the terms ‘cukoo’,
‘grasshopper’, ‘monokini’, ‘dress out’, ‘PING’,  the bound morpheme ‘-punk’,
and finally the first few lines of Wilfred Owen's poem ''Dulce et decorum
est''. The term ‘-punk’ and the poetic verses receive the most detailed
treatment. The recent, and well-established, etymology of the bound morpheme
‘-punk’ allows for some detailed insight into the motivations that led to the
creation of this term and its later productivity in forming new terms. Tracing
the origin back to the term ‘cyberpunk’, Kowalewski describes the emergence of
terms such as ‘steampunk’ and ‘dieselpunk’ as the names of literary genres and
styles. Kowalewski then applies the theory of structural iconicity to the
first few lines of Owen's poem.

EVALUATION

Kowalewski seeks to bring about a progressive problemshift in the theory of
motivation by redefining the concepts of naturalness and arbitrariness and
thereby paving the way ''for a more fine-grained description of the link
between phonological form of an expression and its semantic content'' (2016:
18). While the book makes some progress toward the latter, it fails completely
in achieving the former.

Kowalewski attempts to discredit Saussure's famous insight that linguistic
signs are predominantly arbitrary. The counter-argument that Kowalewski
attempts to construct begins by stating that, to a native speaker, all
relationships between sign-form and meaning are natural. The evidence brought
in support of this claim comes in two parts: (1) any speaker familiar with
English conventions would expect the sound form /tɹiː/ to be associated with
the concept 'tree'; (2) the sense 'expected' is a possible reading of the word
‘natural’. The author admits that (2) is likely not in line with Saussure's
use of the term (Kowalewski 2016: 127), but nonetheless introduces (2) into
his argument as a hypothetical. He further hypothesizes that (3) the term
‘motivated’ may be equated with ‘natural’. On the strength of the
hypotheticals (2) and (3), and the premise outlined in (1), Kowalewski
concludes that conventions are motivated. This argument is a classic case of a
'begging the question' fallacy, and it comes as no surprise that the further
conclusion Kowalewski draws is also fallacious: ''…this approach effectively
dismantles the Saussurean opposition between ‘arbitrary’ and ‘non-arbitrary’''
(2016: 126). In fact, Kowalewski's theorizing merely changes the distinction
‘arbitrary/non-arbitrary’ to ''motivated by convention'' and ''motivated by
convention and something else (i.e. contiguity, similarity)''. The lacuna that
Kowalewski identifies in Saussure's theory is that morphologically simplex
forms may be motivated, as in cases of sound symbolism such as ‘hiss’. This
theoretical gap may have been more easily accounted for by positing that
Saussure was simply wrong about the extent of partial arbitrariness in that it
can also be found in simplex forms as in the case of particularly onomatopoeic
terms. This assertion hardly warrants the wholesale dismissal of the
‘arbitrary/non-arbitrary’ distinction in favour of claiming that all forms are
motivated.

Two further factors affect the overall quality of this volume. Kowalewski's
lengthy description of Cognitive Linguistics only has a minimal bearing on the
theory he constructs. Instead of a lengthy exposition of general theory,
Kowalewski would have been much better served to discuss work in this
framework which deals directly with motivation such as Radden & Panther (2004)
and Panther & Radden (2011). Finally, the volume is beset by a large number of
typographical and editing errors, sometimes severe enough to produce the
opposite of the intended meaning (Kowalewski 2016: 125).

Despite these criticisms, Kowalewski's work has merits, not the least of which
is the carrying forward of a discussion of motivation and of the relationship
between linguistics and semiotics within CL. The insight that motivation (or
partial arbitrariness) resides in subjective assessments of similarity and
contiguity is worthy of further development. Kowalewski also performs a
valuable service to the field by drawing attention to linguistic scholarship
produced in Polish, which may otherwise remain unknown to Anglophone
audiences. Overall, the book is an indication that the combination of
Cognitive Linguistics with semiotics still has important fruit to bear in the
discussion of motivation, even if these have not reached maturity yet. 

REFERENCES

Croft, William. 2006. On explaining metonymy: Comment on Peirsman and
Geeraerts, “Metonymy as a prototypical category''. Cognitive Linguistics 17
(3): 317-326

Langacker, Ronald W. 1987. ‘Foundations of Cognitive Grammar, Volume 1’.
Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Panther, Klaus-Uwe & Günter Radden (eds). 2011. ‘Motivation in Grammar and the
Lexicon’. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Peirsman, Yves & Dirk Geeraerts. 2006. Metonymy as a prototypical category.
Cognitive Linguistics 17(3): 269-316

Pharies, David A. 1985. ‘Charles S. Peirce and the Linguistic Sign’. Amsterdam
and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Radden, Günter & Klaus-Uwe Panther (eds.) 2004. ‘Studies in Linguistic
Motivation’. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter.

Radden, Günter & Zoltán Kövecses. 1999. ''Towards a Theory of Metonymy''. In
Panther, Klaus-Uwe and Günter Radden (eds.), ‘Metonymy in Language and
Thought’, 7-59. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

de Saussure, Ferdinand. 2011. Course in General Linguistics. New York:
Columbia University Press.
Taylor, John. 2002. ‘Cognitive Grammar’. Oxford: Oxford University Press.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Conor Snoek is an anthropological linguist interested in the semantics and
historical linguistics of North American Indigenous languages, especially of
the Totonacan and Athapaskan language families. Currently he is a
post-doctoral fellow at the University of Alberta.





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