32.1424, Review: History of Linguistics; Linguistic Theories; Sociolinguistics: Mäkilähde, Leppänen, Itkonen (2019)

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Subject: 32.1424, Review: History of Linguistics; Linguistic Theories; Sociolinguistics: Mäkilähde, Leppänen, Itkonen (2019)

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Date: Thu, 22 Apr 2021 14:01:35
From: Enrico Torre [contact at enricotorre.com]
Subject: Normativity in Language and Linguistics

 
Discuss this message:
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/reviews/get-review.cfm?subid=36641838


Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/31/31-266.html

EDITOR: Aleksi  Mäkilähde
EDITOR: Ville  Leppänen
EDITOR: Esa  Itkonen
TITLE: Normativity in Language and Linguistics
SERIES TITLE: Studies in Language Companion Series 209
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2019

REVIEWER: Enrico Torre, Università degli Studi di Genova

SUMMARY

‘Normativity in Language and Linguistics,’ edited by Aleksi Mäkilähde, Ville
Leppänen, and Esa Itkonen, is a collection of essays which aims to emphasize
the centrality of the normative aspect of language and the language sciences.
The book includes eight chapters discussing the role of norms and normativity
in language and linguistics from a variety of perspectives, preceded by a
somewhat lengthy introduction by the editors.

In their prologue, the editors shed some light on the notion of norm, claiming
that norms are social entities whose content concerns what somebody is
obligated, permitted, or forbidden to do. In other words, in the social world
we speak of norms “wherever a mistake can be made.” Depending on the type of
norm, actions conforming to or violating them can be described and/or
evaluated in terms of their appropriateness, permissibility, correctness, etc.
Following Itkonen (1983), the editors distinguish between norms of correctness
and norms of rationality. The former regard the well-formedness of sentences
in a language (e.g., in English, the article precedes the head noun), whereas,
quoting von Wright (1963: 9), the latter are concerned with “the means to be
used to attain an end” (e.g., if someone asks you how old you are and you want
to be cooperative, you ought to give them your actual age instead of some
arbitrary number). Ontologically, norms exist at the conceptual level: they
are objects of common knowledge, quite independent of what happens in space
and time. Consequently, the epistemological act we need to know the content of
norms is intuition rather than observation or sense-perception of
spatiotemporal entities. The authors support this claim with the aid of a
range of examples from logic, philosophy, and the history of linguistics. 

In Chapter 2, entitled ‘Concerning the scope of normativity,’ Esa Itkonen
emphasizes that the notion of norm is based on the distinction between right
and wrong. For instance, he claims that science is governed by the macro-norm
“seek the truth,” which presupposes the distinction between a description and
its subject matter. For instance, if grammar is a description of the correct
sentences in a language, then grammar cannot determine which sentences in that
language are correct. With the aid of examples, Itkonen shows that this norm
is often violated in the field of linguistics (e.g., Chomsky 1976), enabling
the rise of several controversial if not downright problematic theories.
Moreover, the author particularly insists on the importance of normativity in
semantics. Contrary to the claims often made by proponents of Cognitive
Linguistics (e.g., Langacker 1987) that meaning is conceptualization, Itkonen
argues that what occurs in people’s minds is irrelevant for semantic analysis.
On the contrary, he claims that semantic analysis must be based on necessary
truths (e.g. Pap 1958). As an example, he points out that the analysis of
‘father’ as ‘male parent’ is reached using two entailments: i) if A is B’s
father, then A is male; ii) if A is B’s father then A is a parent. If what we
have in mind when we use the word ‘father’ contradicts one of these
entailments, this does not invalidate them, it just means we are using the
word incorrectly. The correct use of linguistic structures is thus not
determined by individual conceptualizations, but rather by intersubjectively
valid norms (Wittgenstein 1958). 

In the third chapter, entitled ‘Norms of language,’ Jordan Zlatev and Johan
Blomberg address the ontological and epistemological nature of linguistic
norms. They adopt a phenomenological approach, based on the notions of
intentionality (the essential directedness of consciousness in the world) and
intuition (having a thing present to us as opposed to having it intended in
its absence), integrated with the situated cognition concept of embodied
intersubjectivity (the grounding of our cognition in the bodily experience of
ourselves as well as other people). Against this background, they explore the
insights on linguistic norms provided by Esa Itkonen and Eugen Coşeriu. Based
on their study, the authors draw the following conclusions: 1) linguistic
norms set “invisible” conditions for what constitutes appropriate language use
and they are constantly being confirmed and sanctioned in human interaction;
2) they are known by pretheoretical reflection through intuition whenever they
are confirmed or breached; 3) norms exist at three distinct levels: the
universal level (language in general), the historical level (a specific
language or dialect), and the situated level (a determined register or style);
4) they originate as the result of a dialectic of sedimentation and motivation
processes at a more enchronic and a more diachronic time scale; 5) the basic
characteristics of linguistic norms are inevitability (they constitute the
meaning system of a specific social group), breakability (by mistake or
deliberately flouting), and the dialectical nature of being both social and
individual.  

In the fourth chapter, ‘A primer for linguistic normativists,’ Michael B. Kac
provides an accessible account of the concept of normativity and its relevance
for the linguist. First, he makes the difference explicit between social norms
and physical laws: occurrence of violating behavior is enough to falsify the
latter but not the former (indeed, an utterance such as “dog the barked” does
not falsify the claim that in English the determiner precedes the noun). Then,
Kac shows that the claim that grammaticality is an illusion, put forward by
Sampson & Babarczy (2013), does not hold up to scrutiny. Indeed, with the aim
of a few simple examples, he shows that the existence of exceptions does not
falsify the rule. Moreover, he also shows that Sampson & Babarczy’s claim that
(un)grammaticality is an artifact of present-day linguistics is contradicted
by the ubiquity of this notion in the history of linguistics. Then, Kac claims
that linguistic knowledge is largely intuitive, where intuition is to be
understood as a two-step process: 1) the making of an intuitive judgment; 2)
an inductive inference based on that judgment. He goes on to demonstrate that
“intuition is the rock-bottom of all grammatical analysis,” emphasizing that
even corpus-based analysis ultimately relies on the linguist’s intuition
(e.g., part-of-speech tagging). As a result, the author maintains that
present-day linguists should embrace rather than reject the traditional view
of grammar as a set of requirements and prohibitions.

The fifth chapter, contributed by Tapani Möttönen, addresses ‘The normative
basis of construal,’ a prominent notion in Cognitive Grammar. Construal can be
understood semantically as conventional perspectivity and pragmatically as a
contextual adjustment of perspective. Against a common view in Cognitive
Linguistics, the author argues that the analysis of meaning does not consist
of an analysis of conceptualizations but focuses on the analyst’s intuitive
grasp of socially sanctioned linguistic meaning. Consequently, an individual’s
understanding of meaning is not primarily a conceptualization but rather the
ability to correctly abstract and reapply semantic information based on the
actual use of an expression. Therefore, construal is primarily a
socio-normative entity and only secondarily a cognitive phenomenon. From this
point of view, meaning is conceived of as conventionalized intention:
“construal is learned as a conventional/normative subject-object relation,
which is partially and indirectly characterized by conceptualization but
explicit in the way in which an expression is used” (p. 141). As a result,
construal can be defined as “adjustment of expression according to context.”
 
In the sixth chapter, entitled ‘Language as a system of norms and the
Voloshinovian critique of abstract objectivism,’ Mikko Laasanen evaluates the
suitability of Valentin Voloshinov’s theory of signs as an alternative to the
Saussurean conception, as proposed by representatives of the dialogical
approach to the study of language (e.g., Harris 1990). The author stresses
that Voloshinov distinguishes the notions of theme (i.e., the aspect of
language which is different each time it is used) and meaning (i.e., the
elements of language which are self-identical and unchanging in every
instance). Voloshinov is interested in the study of theme, not meaning.
According to him, the whole concept of langue is an abstraction as he calls
into question the langue-parole dichotomy, which he considers as abstraction.
However, Laasanen shows that the Voloshinovian theory of sign is built on the
very Saussurean position, which implies that the representatives of dialogism
are aiming at the impossible. This undermines Voloshinov’s attempt to defend
the replacement of the notions of invariance and abstractness with variation
and concreteness. Indeed, the study of variation cannot be separated from the
study of invariance (see Thibault 1987), and the notion of meaning in context
cannot be parted from the study of context-independence. As a result, the
Voloshinovian view can be considered a precursor to the study of discourse but
not an alternative to the Saussurean position. 

The seventh chapter, contributed by Ville Leppänon, is entitled ‘Linguistic
variation and change: A normative approach.’ First, the author identifies
three types of variation concerning correctness: 1) non-normative variation
(the incomplete internalization of norms, abnormal language use, and random
mistakes; 2) normative variation (within the grammar of a language or
dialect/register); 3) gray variation (outside the boundaries of certainly
known correctness). The author notices that norms and speech communities have
a (sometimes problematic) two-way relationship: speech communities vary in
size and permanence, and there is constant interaction between different
speech communities and their norms. Leppänen argues that linguistic variation
should be studied employing statistical descriptions of spatiotemporal
occurrences reflected upon the autonomous normative description. The author
individuates three basic cases of norm change: 1) The appearance of a new
norm; 2) the disappearance of an existing norm, 3) the replacement of an
existing norm by a new one. Leppänen argues that variation goes through three
stages: first of all, a novel linguistic structure appears (innovation); then,
if the new structure is accepted by the speech community, it will spread among
the language users (propagation); finally, if the structure becomes regular
enough, it may be interpreted as an obligation, i.e. its occurrence becomes a
rule (normativization).  
 
The eighth chapter, contributed by Anneli Pajunen and Esa Itkonen, is entitled
‘Intuition and beyond: A hierarchy of descriptive methods.’ This chapter
introduces the following hierarchy of methods for linguistics: intuition-based
research > corpus research > experiment. After claiming that the objective of
linguistic studies is the description of a representative corpus of
utterances, they emphasize that each corpus necessarily passes through
normative filters, based on the linguist’s own intuition. This means that
intuition is logically primary to corpus analysis. However, given that
intuition-based claims about structural relations may be misguided, they are
liable to falsification by corpus studies. Then, linguists can resort to
experiments. To test ordinary speakers’ knowledge of their native language,
they can use questionnaires, whose results normally display inter-individual
variation. Different degrees of intuitive certainty reflect the different
levels of force of the corresponding norms. While questionnaires are
experimental only in a weak sense because the subjects have conscious and
voluntary control over their responses, other methods such as eye-tracking
investigations are experimental in a strong sense because the subjects react
involuntarily and subconsciously.

The ninth and last chapter of the book is entitled ‘Norms of correctness and
rationality in research on code-switching’ and is contributed by Aleksi
Mäkilähde. The chapter explores aspects of the ontological and epistemological
foundations of code-switching, taking as a starting point the lack of
consensus among researchers in the field. After a brief overview of syntactic
research on code-switching, the author presents code-switching as a
rule-governed phenomenon. With the aid of examples from contexts as different
as Finnish-English code-switching in the United States and Latin-Greek
code-switching in Cicero’s letters, Mäkilähde illustrates the role of
intuition in linguistic behavior. Then, he discusses matters of terminological
clarity, the testing/falsification of theories and their predictions, and the
roles of different methods (and their methodological implications for the
field). After demonstrating the relevance of rationality principles to both
accounting for individual occurrences and explaining code-switching
constraints, the author argues in favor of a methodological synthesis between
intuition and observation.
 
EVALUATION

‘Normativity in Language and Linguistics’ represents a brave effort to
contrast the long-standing tendency to describe and explain language - and
human behavior in general - primarily in bio-physical and/or psychological
terms. By bringing the normative aspect of language back to the fore, this
collection of essays goes a long way in restoring a balance between the social
and individual dimensions of language or, at least, advancing the debate on
the true nature of the object. As such, this volume represents a fine
contribution to the John Benjamins series ‘Studies in Language Companion,’
which includes authoritative contributions such as Viti (2015) and Behme and
Neef (2018). The aims of the book are stated clearly in the introduction and
pursued in the eight standalone contributions. Each chapter addresses a
different topic in linguistic research, illustrating the inescapability of
normativity in language and linguistics. Indeed, notions such as norm,
normativity, and variation, represent the red thread which unites the
discussion of philosophical, theoretical, and empirical issues where
normativity is shown to play a crucial role. 

The decision to include contributions addressing a range of topics situated at
different ontological and epistemological levels provides the reader with an
overview of the relevance of normativity to both language (the object of
study) and linguistics (the study of the object). This is especially
important, in the light of the reiterated positivist attempts to assimilate
linguistics to hard sciences (e.g., Derwing 1980). As a matter of fact,
throughout the 20th Century (and the beginning of the 21st), the status of
linguistics as an autonomous discipline has been constantly called into
question. The viability of  a non-empirical, “autonomous” linguistics (AL from
now on), has been attacked from a range of different camps. Today, the lure of
positivism seems particularly strong. Indeed, it is often taken for granted
that linguistics, to progress, should become more and more empirically
oriented. Against this background, the value of AL is often diminished or
denied (e.g. Sampson 2007), sometimes even ridiculed (e.g., Tuggy 1999). Even
when the legitimacy of non-empirical studies is conceded, it is normally
implied that, from a scientific point of view, empirical linguistics is
“superior” (e.g., Eddington 2008). This book spells out why these claims are
unwarranted, and an alternative, more hermeneutic, perspective is necessary. 
 
By emphasizing the role of normativity in language, the essays contained in
this volume clearly show the qualitative difference between human and natural
phenomena as different objects of study. This entails that the methodology of
linguistics is necessarily different from that of the natural sciences. Since
linguistics is a cover term with a heterogeneous referent, it is necessary to
distinguish AL from causal linguistics (CL, henceforth): AL is represented by
the non-causal description of the norms of a language. CL, instead, includes
psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, historical linguistics, conversation
analysis, and text analysis, and many other empirically oriented linguistic
disciplines (see Itkonen 1983). All components of CL inquire into the causal
mechanisms that bring linguistic norms, behavior, and knowledge into being.
Both AL and CL are necessary to the study of language: they are situated at
distinct levels and differ in terms of data, methods, and object of study. The
claim that AL should be dispensed with denotes a certain lack of
methodological self-understanding (Itkonen 1991a; Zlatev 2007) and is
contradicted by the history of linguistics (Itkonen 1991b).

While the essays contained in this book show that normativity is ubiquitous in
both AL and CL, epistemologically this has a particularly important
consequence for AL, which addresses language as a system of social norms. Any
synchronic grammar of a language ever composed is a description of this
system. Since the linguistic system is a normative –  rather than
spatiotemporal – object and the normative principle which guides AL is
correctness, a study in AL will not be primarily concerned with an analysis of
actual linguistic behavior (which belongs to the realm of the spatiotemporal),
but of the correct sentences of a language (which belongs to the realm of the
normative). Indeed, not all sentences that are uttered are correct, and not
all correct sentences of a language are necessarily attested. While the latter
fall within the scope of interest of AL, the former do not. The core of AL is,
therefore, the object of a non-empirical undertaking, whose corresponding
epistemic act is the linguist’s intuition. This does not mean that AL can
eschew the use of empirical data. Indeed, correctness is a continuum: there
are clear cases, where the (in)correctness of a sentence is beyond question,
but most cases are less than clear. These cases are characterized by the
presence of variation, which implies that social control is less than
absolute. This is where resorting to CL becomes necessary. However, the
chapters by Leppänen, Pajunen and Itkonen, and Mäkilähde demonstrate that even
in CL normativity plays an all-important role. 
 
While my overall evaluation of the book is extremely positive, I must
highlight that some chapters include controversial statements which may
confuse the reader. The most striking example can be found in the introductory
section of Chapter 6, where Mikko Laasanen claims that “[t]he purpose of this
study is to argue against the attempts to replace the Saussurean conception of
language (understood in a wide sense) by a dialogical theory of language, by
critically examining Voloshinov’s critique of abstract objectivism” (p. 152)
but then he goes on claiming, “Specifically, I hope to find out whether the
Voloshinovian theory of language offers a viable alternative to the Saussurean
position, as claimed by Voloshinov and the representatives of a dialogical
approach” (ibidem). Presented in this order, these passages are problematic
because the author first claims that he is going to argue against a specific
position, and only later he claims that he is going to analyze the foundations
of such a position. The reader may be led to conclude that the analysis is
skewed by the author’s pre-existent theoretical persuasions. Other less than
ideal passages are also found in other chapters. For instance, in Chapter 2
the author argues that “[r]epresentatives of Cognitive Linguistics in general,
and Cognitive Grammar in particular, endorse the position that meanings are
individual-psychological (and largely unconscious) entities, which entails
that semantics has to be replaced by psychology” (p. 41). As Itkonen himself
specified elsewhere (e.g., Itkonen 2016: 36), this claim applies to the
initial (though perhaps still prevailing) model of Cognitive Linguistics but
more recent contributions have tried to reach a compromise between the
psychological and the social, the neural and the cultural. It may have been
appropriate to repeat this qualification in this chapter. 
 
Despite these minor flaws, this book has the merit of emphasizing the
all-important role of the social and normative dimension of language, warning
us against the dangers of viewing language as a prominently individual, mental
object. In so doing, the book also goes a long way in defending the dual
nature of linguistics, by showing that the attempts to deny it are bound to
fall into contradiction. Moreover, by repeatedly appealing to the history of
linguistics, they also warn us that a lack of interest in the tradition may
lead linguists astray, resulting in a misunderstanding of the ontological and
methodological status of their discipline. As a result, along with bringing
normativity back to the fore in linguistic studies, this book also represents
a call to researchers to resist the positivist push and avoid falling for a
misguided “empiricism at all costs,” recommending instead that they select the
methods and instruments to adopt in each study based on the nature of the
phenomenon they aim to address.

REFERENCES

Behme, Christina, and Neef, Martin (eds.). 2018. Essays on Linguistics
Realism. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Chomsky, Noam. 1976. Reflections on Language. Glasgow: Fontana/Collins.

Derwing, Bruce. 1980. Against Autonomous Linguistics. In T.A. Perry (ed.),
Evidence and Argumentation in Linguistics. Berlin and New York: De Gruyter.

Eddington, David. 2008. Linguistics and the Scientific Method. Southwest
Journal of Linguistics 27 (2): 1-17.

Harris, Roy. 1990. On Redefining Linguistics. In G. Hayley & T.J. Taylor
(eds.), Redefining Linguistics. London: Routledge. 18-52.

Itkonen, Esa. 1983. Causality in Linguistic Theory. London: Croom Helm.

Itkonen, Esa. 1991a. What is Methodology (and History) of Linguistics Good
for, Epistemologically Speaking? Histoire, Epistemologie, Language 13 (1):
51-75.

Itkonen, Esa. 1991b. Universal History of Linguistics. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins.

Itkonen, Esa. 2016. An Assessment of (Mentalist) Cognitive Semantics. Public
Journal of Semiotics 7 (1): 1-42.

Langacker, Ronald W. 1987. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar, vol. 1:
Theoretical Prerequisites. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 

Pap, Arthur. 1958. Semantic and Necessary Truth: An Inquiry into the
Foundations of Analytic Philosophy. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Sampson, Geoffrey. 2007. “Grammar without Grammaticality.” Corpus Linguistics
and Linguistic Theory 3 (1): 1-32

Thibault, Paul. 1987. Re-reading Saussure: The Dynamics of Signs in Social
Life. London: Routledge.

Tuggy, David. 1999. Linguistic Evidence for Polysemy in the Mind: A Reply to
William Croft and Dominiek Sandra. Cognitive Linguistics 10 (1): 343-368.

Viti, Carlotta (ed.). 2015. Perspectives on Historical Syntax. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins.

Von Wright, George H. 1963. Norm and Action: A Logical Enquiry. London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1958 (1953). Philosophical Investigations. Oxford:
Blackwell.

Zlatev, Jordan. 2007. Spatial Semantics. In D. Geeraerts and H. Cuyckens
(eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics. Oxford and New York:
Oxford University Press. 318-350.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Enrico Torre (Ph.D. in Linguistics, Lancaster University, 2015) is currently a
research fellow in English and linguistics at the University of Genoa, Italy.
His research interests include English linguistics, Romance languages,
theories of language, and the history and philosophy of linguistics. He is
currently investigating the simultaneity network in (the history of) English.
At the same time, he is also interested in the sociolinguistics of Galician
and Portuguese. In the recent past, he analyzed the patterns of use of Italian
idioms.





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