who says what the words say? - instituto chileno de terapia familiar

Who Says What the Words Say?The Problem of Linguistic Meaning in Psychology

Carlos CornejoPontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile

Abstract. Currently, cognitive psychology assumes that linguistic mean-ing is based on associations between linguistic forms and semantic con-tents. This conception presents empirical as well as logical problems. Itdoes not explain the flexibility of language use and it is inconsistent withthe subject-dependence of all cognitive acts. A theoretical analysis of theseissues shows a history of confusion between linguistic and phenomeno-logical interpretations of the term meaning, and between the external andinternal perspective towards intentionality of mental life. However, ifunderstood as perspectives, both uses underline non-exclusive aspects oflinguistic meaning, namely its epistemic objectivity and its ontologicalsubjectivity. It is argued that both aspects could be integrated through thepragmatization and semiotization of meaning.

Key Words: generativism, intentionality, meaning, pragmatics, semantics,semiotics, structuralism

Introduction: Logical and Psychological Problems with theNotion of Linguistic Meaning

For many authors, meaning represents the main aspect of human cognitionand its proper theorization amounts to the key problem of cognitivepsychology (Bruner, 1990, 1992; Glenberg & Robertson, 2000; Kitchener,1994). Throughout the entire intellectual history of psychology as a disci-pline, research programs—in the sense of Lakatos (1970)—have emergedemphasizing the fundamental role of the dimension of meaning in humancognitive functioning. Cases in point are the studies on memory (Bartlett,1932/1961), perception (Wertheimer, 1959), language (Buhler, 1934/1999)and developmental psychology (Piaget, 1952; Vygotsky, 1978), which, evenbefore the consolidation of the so-called ‘cognitive revolution’, pointed withdifferent emphases to the relevance of meaning in the configuration ofpsychological phenomena.

Theory & Psychology Copyright © 2004 Sage Publications. Vol. 14(1): 5–28DOI: 10.1177/0959354304040196 www.sagepublications.com

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The most frequent use of the term ‘meaning’ in cognitive psychology andin the psychology of language designates the contents of linguistic con-structions (e.g. morphemes, words, clauses, etc.). According to this use of‘meaning’, linguistic constructions evoke objective contents in the speaker’smind. The objective nature of these representations is verified through thehigh degree of consensus in a given linguistic community. The associationbetween form and content is thus independent of the subjectivity of thespeaker/listener. These contents associated with linguistic forms constitutetheir semantic content, which has been conceptualized in varying ways inpsychology (e.g. Bierwisch & Schreuder, 1992; Burguess & Lund, 1997;Landauer & Dumais, 1997; Rapaport, 1998), semantics (Fauconnier, 1994;Jackendoff, 1988; Katz & Fodor, 1963), philosophy (Putnam, 1975), semi-otics (Eco, 1976) and formal logic (Hintikka, 1989; Kripke, 1972).

This common way of understanding the concept of meaning is, however,in conflict with some theoretical beliefs strongly shared by the cognitivepsychologists’ scientific community. In order to understand this conflict, it isnecessary to consider one of the most recurring and well-establishedfindings of cognitive psychology: that subjects actively construct theirexperience. The knower is not a mere passive recipient who reproduces, in aquasi-pictorial manner, the information he or she receives from the environ-ment. Instead, there are a number of internal processes, normally automatic,that participate in the structuring of external reality. This thesis, known bysome authors as cognitive constructivism (Christmann & Scheele, 2001;Neisser, 1967; Nuse, Groeben, Freitag, & Schreier, 1991), has been empiric-ally demonstrated in various cognitive processes (e.g. through the verifica-tion of top-down influences in human perception, attention and memory) andit represents a common assumption in several theories—many of which arerival in other aspects and range from Gestalt to connectionist models,including theories of information processing and activity theories. The basicidea of the knower as a (co-)constructor (Valsiner, 1994) of experiencedreality goes across subdisciplines and theories, and has been characterized asbelonging to the epistemological bases of the discipline (Bruner, 1992).

Extending this basic constructivist idea to the realm of languagecomprehension, linguistic meaning should be the result of a subjectiveinterpretation arising from a particular context, that is, ‘the individual’smeaningful construal of the situation’ (Glenberg & Robertson, 2000, p. 383),based on the assumption that ‘nothing is meaningful in itself’ (Lakoff, 1987,p. 292). However, if we claim that it is the subject using language whoconstrues words or confers meaningfulness on them, it is no longer possibleto maintain that words have an inherently associated meaning or semanticcontent. How can we reconcile the notion that a linguistic expression has asemantic content with the notion that it is the subject who understands itwho constructs its meaning? Does a linguistic expression possess a meaningeo ipso, or does it become meaningful only as it is constructed by the

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speaker/hearer? Is there a conventional content that is attached to linguisticconstructions, which is more or less independent of who uses them andwhere they are used, or are these constructions rather ‘a vehicle throughwhich the meanings can be realized’ (Budwig, 1995, p. 4)? Can a mentalcontent be, at the same time, given and constructed, a priori and aposteriori?

In summary, this view of linguistic meaning generates a contradictionbetween two theoretical postulates. On the one hand, cognitive psychologyasserts that there are objective meanings attached to linguistic constructions,which are, by definition, independent of the subject. On the other hand,cognitive psychology also claims that the meaningfulness of linguisticexpressions is the result of an interpretive and constructive process carriedout by the speaker/listener, of whom it is therefore not independent. Thus,linguistic meaning becomes at the same time dependent on, and independentof, the subject.

The (implicit) solution to this dilemma is to assume the existence oflinguistic meanings ‘in the head’ of the speaker/listener. These linguisticmeanings are organized in some sort of mental lexicon, to which the subjectcan gain access depending on their use-contingencies (e.g. E.V. Clark, 1993;Jackendoff, 2002). According to this popular view, speakers possess a stockof lexical entries which they use in linguistic comprehension and com-munication. However, this account of language comprehension creates anew problem. Assuming that a given expression can be associated to morethan one linguistic meaning, subjects must be able to decide, based oncontextual cues, which is the appropriate meaning, that is, which lexicalentry is required in order to understand the expression. Yet, to be able tomake this kind of lexical decision, subjects also need to understand themeanings of all the alternative lexical entries. This requires additional lexicalinformation if one wishes to preserve the consistency of the theory. Thisadditional lexical information creates the need for a second, deeper, compre-hension, namely the comprehension not of linguistic expressions but oflexical entries. This creates an obvious regressus infinitus: the existence oflinguistic meanings ‘in the head’ pushes the conflict between the objective,conventional nature of linguistic meanings and their constructive, con-textual, subjective nature towards a deeper level. Thus, this solution givesrise to the same original questions, this time at a higher logical level: Howcan these two notions be compatible, that lexical entries possess a semanticcontent and that at the same time this content is the outcome of an activeinterpretive process on the part of the subject? Does a lexical entry possessa meaning eo ipso, or is it meaningful only as the speaker/listener compre-hends it? And so on. Summarizing, the mental lexicon hypothesis is not ableto solve the conflict between the subject-independence of linguistic meaningand the subject-dependence of all forms of meaningfulness.

CORNEJO: LINGUISTIC MEANING IN PSYCHOLOGY 7

In order to understand the nature of this apparent contradiction, it ishelpful to examine the interdisciplinary origins of the traditional concept oflinguistic meaning in psychology. In the following section I conduct atheoretical and historical analysis of the definition given to the term‘meaning’ by the school of structuralism, the first great school of linguistics,and I discuss the ways in which the legacy of this view has produced(paradoxically, through the generativist school) the contradiction presentedbefore. Following this, I show how the tension between meaning’s depend-ence on the subject and its independence of it is observed in linguistics aswell, specifically in the fields of semantics and pragmatics, in the discussionabout the role played by context in the formation of linguistic meaning. Inthe following section, I discuss in greater depth the epistemological premisesunderlying the two conflicting views of linguistic meaning, and I argue thatthe problem of meaning represents a much deeper schism in the field ofpsychology, related to the epistemic value given to the intentional experi-ence of consciousness. In the next section, I propose the need to integrate theobjective and subjective aspects of linguistic meaning. I argue that thecontradiction between the subjective and objective nature of the linguisticmeaning rests on the false dichotomy, already manifest in Frege’s writings,between the (epistemic) objectivity of meaning and the (ontological) subject-ivity of consciousness. In the penultimate section, I argue that pragmat-ization and semiotization are plausible ways to integrate the subjective andobjective aspects of meaning. Finally, I present the major conclusions thatcan be drawn from this analysis.

Origins of Linguistic Meaning

The Structuralist Legacy

In the beginnings of scientific linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure(1916/1966) proposed a fundamental distinction between language—‘langue’ (p. 9)—and speaking—‘parole’ (p. 13). Saussure and the structural-ists understood langue as a superindividual system of signs, coherent andself-contained, which is independent of the speaker, inasmuch as it con-stitutes a social fact. This could and should be distinguished from parole, thereal use of language by specific individuals in specific situations. Saussureexplicitly limited the object of study of the emerging field of linguistics tolangue.

Within this framework, Saussure defines meaning—‘concept’, ‘signifie’(pp. 65f.)—as a psychic representation appearing in the subject’s con-sciousness through the quasi-physical representation of a sound—‘imageacoustique’, ‘signifiant’ (pp. 65f.)—in the speaker’s mind. Both elementsconstitute, for the structuralist school, the two components of any linguistic


sign, which are as intimately linked as the two sides of a sheet of paper. Thisclose link between them is based on the assumption that the sign belongs tothe langue, that is, to the superindividual linguistic system. This idea allowsSaussure to account for the objectivity of linguistic signs. In ascribing thelinguistic sign to the langue system, Saussure defines and limits the semanticdimension of linguistics’ object of knowledge, assuming that the relationsbetween linguistic forms and semantic contents are (socially) fixed andgrounded at the superindividual level. Thus, in the structuralist view,meaning is ultimately an element of the langue, an intrinsic property of thelinguistic sign, just like its morphology and phonology; the fact that it is apsychic representation does not impinge on its social nature. The speaker’smind is rather the space where these superindividual creations unfold. Itfollows that linguistic meaning is part of the structure of language’s socialsystem, with an ontological status different from that of the subjectiveexperience of the individual who uses the linguistic signs.

Semantics’ displacement towards langue leads us to the distinction ofobjective units of meaning attached to linguistic signs. These are bydefinition independent of the subject’s experience, since in the structuralistview the object of the study of linguistics ends precisely where the use oflanguage in real contexts by actual individuals begins.

Once the subject has been excluded, the relation between signification andsignifier unavoidably turns into a static relation, one that is unable to accountfor the flexibility and variability of meaning in everyday uses of language.After all, metaphor, metonymy, jokes and puns are not as rare as theSaussurian model would suggest. This plasticity in the relation betweenform and content, according to which a word can have different meaningsdepending on the context in which it is used, is left unexplained in theSaussurian model.

The Generativist Continuity

Although Chomsky (1957, 1965) was explicit in presenting his theory as analternative approach to structuralism, some of the Saussurian school’sessential distinctions would be recycled in the generativist model, particu-larly those concerning the nature of linguistic meaning.

In Chomsky’s approach, syntax is conceived as a coherent system oflogical rules operating at a mental level, which is responsible for languageproduction and comprehension. This new conception requires the assump-tion that a logical-syntactic component of the abstract system is operating ‘inthe head’ of each native speaker in the form of a dynamic system in chargeof the generation of syntactic structures (Hormann, 1976, 1981).

According to Chomsky (1965), any native speaker is an ideal speaker inthe sense that he or she is capable of generating an infinite number ofgrammatically correct sentences, as well as being able to identify the


grammaticality of any sentence in his or her native language, even thoughthis speaker has never heard it before. Chomsky assigns the term com-petence to the linguistic knowledge that allows this capacity. When thespeaker uses language in communicative situations, he or she is showinglinguistic performance. This performance results from the activation of thecompetence mentioned before, but it is also subject to interference from anumber of extra-grammatical factors, which account for the possible linguis-tic errors which speakers actually incur. When comparing the competence/performance pair with the langue/parole dichotomy, it is evident that thelatter is based on a distinction between two levels of description (social vsindividual), while the former distinguishes between potentiality andrealization.

It is important to note that the pre-existence of objective and contextuallinks between lexical items and meanings is a prerequisite for the mentalsyntactic mechanism to be able to function properly. For semantic rules toadequately perform their interpretation of syntactic structures, there have tobe some preordained relations between the lexical items that are generatedand transformed, and the meanings corresponding to the contents for whichthe items stand. Thus, the Chomskian linguistic paradigm, despite presentingitself as an alternative to structuralism, nonetheless assumes a structuralistdefinition of sign, inasmuch as the semantically blind manipulation ofsyntactic structures is possible only if the subsequent semantic interpretationis guaranteed in advance. Semantic translation of syntactic structures is thussafeguarded by the assumption of ‘meaning-in-itself’ (Cornejo, 2000, p. 130),attached to the word and independent of the speaker’s subjectivity.

While the structuralist school stated that the meaning-significant unionwas a social fact, in the generativist framework this unit has psychologicalreality in the head of the native speaker. In this sense, linguistic competenceis a sort of ‘langue in the head’ which includes the knowledge of form–content associations.1 Thus, the generativist theory brings language compre-hension back into the subject matter of linguistics. Such a reincorporation,however, assumes a redefinition of comprehension, from a subjectiveexperience to a composition of isolated meaning units.

The assumption of abstract language representations in the individualmind has also been criticized as being illegitimate by defenders of aPlatonist conception of the language:

There is a distinction between a speaker’s knowledge of a language and thelanguage itself—what the knowledge is knowledge of. . . . The language isa timeless, unchangeable, objective structure; knowledge of a language istemporal, subject to change, and subjective. (Katz, 1981, p. 9)

Katz calls for a return to the langue, under the motto ‘linguistics is notpsychological science’ (p. 76). According to him, the ideal speaker’sknowledge of the language cannot be the subject matter of linguistics, since


this would entail a confusion between the knowledge we have of somethingand the things that we have knowledge of. He concludes that sentences,meanings and language are abstract objects. What Katz forgets in hisreasoning is the fact that Chomsky’s ‘native speaker’ is already a Platonistconstruction, not a real one. Katz’s distinction between the speaker’sknowledge of a language and the language itself holds only when thespeaker is a real one, not a Platonic one. The abstract objects are notneglected in a generativist framework; they are simply supposed to be in thehead.

Nevertheless, the ‘langue in the head’ assumption granted the Chomskianmodel a certain psychological flavor, which seduced many psychologists(e.g. Johnson 1965, 1966; Miller & Isard, 1963; Miller & McKean, 1964)and had a decisive influence in the evolution of psycholinguistics. From thispoint on, psychology appears to have assimilated the structuralist-generativist conception of linguistic meaning which is based on the semanticcontent’s independence from the speaker/listener.

On the Distinction between Semantics and Pragmatics

The tension between a subject-dependent and a subject-independent mean-ing is also found at the point where the study of the structure of languagegives way to the study of language use. Thus, the debate about the limits ofsemantics and pragmatics can be understood as the point of conflict betweenthe two ways of understanding meaning.

Adhering to a structuralist-generativist definition of meaning, linguistsusually understand semantics as the study of linguistic meaning, understoodas the content conventionally linked to a given lexical item (e.g. Cruse,2000). The level of description of semantics, as with the other linguisticssubdisciplines, is always structural, that is, it concerns the structure of thegeneral linguistic system. With the writings of Wittgenstein (1953), Austin(1962), Searle (1969/1989) and Grice (1975), among others, the viewemerged progressively that a description of the linguistic system’s structuredid not encompass language use phenomena.

The division of the study of language in its structure and its use signalsthe emergence of a new linguistic subdiscipline called pragmatics. Althoughthe definition of pragmatics’ object of study is not altogether clear (Cruse,2000; Davis, 1991; Gazdar, 1979; Levinson, 1983), authors agree that itconcerns the aspects of meaning that are derived from language use, and notfrom its semantic structure, as portrayed in the motto ‘pragmatics =meaning minus semantics’ (see Levinson, 1983, p. 12). Pragmatics concernsitself with linguistic utterances in context, including the meaningfulelements produced by social and contextual factors.


Language use always occurs in a specific context, by a specific speaker,with a given communicative goal. Therefore, the pragmatic aspect oflinguistic meaning constitutes a psychological explanandum: when weconsider the use context of a particular expression, we are referring not to a‘meaning-in-itself’, but, rather, to the subjective experience of meaning. It isno longer about describing the (decontextualized) meaning of words, butabout the online meaning that a speaker/listener constructs when using/hearing those words in a particular context. Thus, the study of language usecompels us to go beyond the structural description of ‘meaning-in-itself’ andfocuses our attention on the subjective comprehension of utterances.

Pragmatics’ quasi-psychological nature should have led it to confront theproblem of the integration of linguistic meaning’s objective and subjectiveaspects. Surprisingly, this has not been the case, mainly because a largeportion of the research that nowadays can be classified as pragmaticsassumes, either implicitly or explicitly, a structuralist-generativist definitionof linguistic meaning, which is always alien to the experience of meaning.Traditional pragmatics presumes the existence, ‘in the head’, of the utter-ance’s ‘meaning-in-itself’, while a pragmatic component is responsible foraccommodating this ‘meaning-in-itself’ to the particular communicativesituation and for extracting additional contextual inferences. In this view,pragmatic aspects are reduced to inferences that are subsidiary and com-plementary to the mental lexicon’s ‘meaning-in-itself’, which continues tobe the true linguistic meaning. Paradoxically, all contextual elements influ-encing online linguistic comprehension—both non-linguistic (e.g. non-verbal gestures) and paralinguistic elements (e.g. prosody, tone ofvoice)—have been excluded from research in pragmatics (H.H. Clark,1996).

Although the contextual aspect of language use is only a part of (and notsynonymous with) the subjective experience of meaning, its absolute ex-clusion from pragmatics shows the incapacity of the discipline to integratecomprehension elements not pertaining to the langue, which, in turn, revealsthat classic pragmatics has not abandoned the structuralist view of meaning.The language studied in pragmatics corresponds to the superindividualsystem of language. Thus, pragmatics becomes the study of the interactionalconsequences of the manipulation of superindividual prefabricated semanticunits. The speaker/listener’s experience of meaning is described, in the end,as a fusion of two elements belonging to two different logical realms: the‘meaning-in-itself’—independent of the subject—and the pragmaticinferences—dependent on both the subject and the context.

Pragmatic theory’s mixture of elements belonging to different logicaldomains seems to be the result of overlooking the fact that the study oflanguage use requires abandoning the basic theoretical assumptions thatallow us to legitimately talk about ‘meaning-in-itself’. This is so inasmuchas, in considering the context of language use, we are no longer dealing with


a structuralist-generativist ‘meaning-in-itself’, but, rather, with a speaker/listener’s experience of meaning, that is, with a ‘meaning-for-somebody’.

It follows, then, that, its eventual descriptive value notwithstanding, theanalytical distinction between semantics and pragmatics lacks psychologicalreality (Cornejo, 2000; Gibbs, 1994; Rumelhart, 1979; Shanon, 1988). Thenotion that linguistic comprehension involves the recovery of the lexicalitems’ predetermined semantic content, with the role of the context being thefilter that selects the adequate semantic content, not only suffers from thelogical problem of confounding the social and individual levels of descrip-tion, but is also empirically untenable from a psychological perspective, forat least three reasons. In the first place, it is obvious that in the microgeneticmoment of linguistic comprehension, contextual-pragmatic information is asimportant as semantic information in order to comprehend a given ex-pression (Gibbs, 1984, 1994). Second, the definition of any lexical item’slinguistic meaning, regardless of how simple this item appears to be, alwaysrefers to some general background knowledge, without which the definitionwould become incomprehensible. A large portion of this background know-ledge remains implicit and is evoked by non-linguistic and paralinguisticcontextual elements, which are therefore (strictly speaking) non-semantic.This is precisely the insight that inspired many fruitful theories in cognitivepsychology, linguistics and artificial intelligence, such as the theories ofschemata (Bartlett, 1932/1961; Rumelhart, 1980), scripts (Schank &Abelson, 1977) and frames (Fillmore, 1982; Minsky, 1977). Third, develop-mental psychology provides abundant evidence that language acquisitionproceeds in a contextual and holistic fashion, as opposed to an analytical one(D.A. Baldwin, Markman, Bill, Desjardins, & Irwin, 1996; D.A. Baldwin &Tomasello, 1998).

Interestingly, criticism of the semantics/pragmatics distinction has alsooriginated from non-generativist theories, specifically from the cognitivelinguistics theory. This theory rejects the modular view of language, whichisolates it from the entire whole of cognitive processes and operations andunderstands meaning as conceptualization (Lakoff, 1987; Langacker, 1987,1990; Rudzka-Ostyn, 1988).

In rejecting the notion of an autonomous linguistic faculty, cognitivelinguistics necessarily removes the need for pragmatics as a separatebranch of study. All meaning is, in a sense, pragmatic, as it involves theconceptualizations of human beings in a physical and social environment.(Taylor, 1995, p. 132)

What the cognitive linguistics school understands as meaning is obviouslynot the same as the ‘meaning-in-itself’ of the structuralist and generativistschools. For the former, the meaning of a linguistic construction is aninterpretation arising out of a particular context (Geeraerts, 1993; Givon,1989), being, as a consequence, both context- and subject-dependent.


The shift from structure to use uncovers the problem of the existence oftwo opposing ways of understanding linguistic meaning, depending onwhether it refers to superindividual regularities and conventions, or to thespeaker/listener’s experience of meaning. In what follows I would like toargue that this tension implies different metatheoretical views regarding themore basic issue of intentionality.

Meaning and Intentionality

The tension between the objectivity of what words say and the subjectivityof the mental construction of the subject who uses them in real contexts isthe (psycho-)linguistic expression of a deeper division in psychology, onethat arises from the speaker/listener’s perspective towards the intentionalexperience of consciousness.

The view of linguistic meaning as ‘meaning-in-itself’ emphasizes theobjective character of meaning: it concerns only conventionalized—intersubjectively valid— associations between linguistic form and content.Since the connection between form and meaning is an intersubjective one,what the words say is independent of their subjective use. This viewpointthus adopts a superindividual perspective, located outside subjective experi-ence. From this standpoint, the phenomenological experience of linguisticcomprehension becomes superfluous to the study of meaning, inasmuch assemantic content has an objective character, and either the subject possessesthis meaning or it does not. It follows that all the subtleties and deviationsfrom conventional associations that are observed in daily language use haveto be explained without altering the essential principle of linguistic mean-ing’s objectivity. On the other hand, the view of linguistic meaning as‘meaning-for-somebody’—e.g. that of cognitive linguistics—emphasizes thesubjective nature of meaning and places the phenomenon within the speaker/listener’s phenomenological experience: meaning does not reside objectivelyin the expression eo ipso, since a word’s meaningfulness is always asubject’s contextualized construction. According to this view, the (empiric-ally) proven significance of the context in the definition of linguisticmeaning is a result of the fact that meaning is always a psychologicalconstruction, a ‘meaning-for-somebody’.

Thus we have two concepts of meaning, depending on whether we situateourselves within or without the speaker/listener’s experience of meaning. Ifwe are situated outside this experience, meaning is objective, social and itresides in the words. If we take the perspective from inside the phenomeno-logical experience, meaning is a subjective, contextual construction, and itresides in the mind in the form of an intentional content of consciousness.

It thus follows that traditional semantics’ term meaning puts the intention-ality of consciousness in parentheses, using it merely as a working hypo-


thesis that justifies an inquiry into an object of linguistic knowledge. In thiscase meaning refers to a cartography of the conventional form–contentregularities existing in a linguistic community, which has nothing to do withthe psychological explanandum of meaning as a subjective comprehension.

According to this analysis, the ‘meaning-in-itself’ assumed by differentpsychological schools to exist ‘in the speakers’ heads’ is actually a unit ofsocial nature, which is induced from the regularities in the linguisticbehavior of a group of speakers. That is, it constitutes a description of theexperience of meaning from the outside. Therefore, the psycholinguisticsupposition that the ‘meaning-in-itself’ would be stored in the memoryrepresents an illegitimate mixture of different perspectives: elements de-scribed from the perspective of an external observer regarding the subject’sexperience of meaning are treated as phenomenological units, whose natureis only accessible in the first person. The ‘meaning-in-itself’ is an analysisunit belonging to a (macro-)social level, not to the speaker’s/listener’sintentional experience. Therefore, it cannot be supposed ‘in the head’.2

Such a standpoint could eventually lead us, however, to what Donnellan(1968) has called the Humpty Dumpty theory of meaning, that is, a theory ofthe kind ‘When I use a word, it means just what I choose to mean . . .’.3 Ifmeaning is by definition a meaning-for-somebody, then it becomes a purelysubjective construction and completely variable depending on subject andcontext. Yet it is an empirical fact that linguistic expressions do not evokejust any content in the mind of the speaker, but a set of given objectivecontents, the presence of which provides support to the assumption of a‘meaning-in-itself’ independent of the subject who uses it and the context inwhich it is used. The debate about meaning’s constructive-subjective char-acter should not ignore the fact that speakers in a community are normally inagreement about the meanings of words and sentences, and when this is notthe case, they can reach agreement without great difficulty.

Nevertheless, it is not clear how a psychological conception of meaning,which approaches the phenomenon from within the experience of meaning,therefore emphasizing its subjective nature, can be compatible with theempirical fact that this meaning is usually objective. Is it possible forsomething to be at the same time both objective and subjective?

Objectivity and Subjectivity of Linguistic Meaning

It is interesting to note that the traditional conception of linguisticmeaning—as ‘meaning-in-itself’—brings with it a particular view about thenature of the relation between individual and society. The idea of ‘meaning-in-itself’ is always proposed in opposition to other, non-objective contents(of consciousness), assuming that there is a conceptual distinction amongcontents (of consciousness) depending on whether they are objective or


subjective. In the case of Saussure, it is precisely the objectivity of linguisticmeaning that allows it to be assigned to the social fact of langue. Thisimplicitly divides mental contents in two mutually exclusive categories: a‘meaning-in-itself’—objective and social—and a fuzzy set of other sub-jective and idiosyncratic mental contents.

All this suggests that the idea of ‘meaning-in-itself’ is based on adichotomous view of the relation between individual and society, accordingto which contents of consciousness are different from the social andobjective contents belonging to the social linguistic system. Individualcontents (of consciousness) cannot be social, inasmuch as they are notobjective, while social meaning cannot be subjective, for it is objective. Thisreasoning can be outlined in the following way:

P1 Meaning is a conventional content.P2 If a content is conventional, then it is objective.P3 A content is either objective or subjective.

C Meaning is not subjective.

Despite the reasoning being valid, it contains an ambiguous predicatewhich is found both in the third premise and in the conclusion: ‘subjective’.P3 and C are erroneous inasmuch as subjectivity is not necessarily opposedto objectivity. In order to make this clear, it has to be noted that theobjectivity of meaning is based on its social conventionality and not on theobjectivity of its referent. In fact, in semantic terms, an expression can havean objective meaning even in the absence of an observable referent—e.g.electron, acceleration—or a specific referent—e.g. freedom, figure, blueness.P1 asserts the fact that, as result of social interactions, certain consensualsound–content associations emerge whose validity extends to the wholelinguistic community.4 Thus, when we talk about the objectivity of meaning,we are referring precisely to the conventional character of some associationsin a given linguistic community. In other words, objectivity is understood asintersubjectivity. The influential Saussurian reasoning presented above isbased on the claim that meaning cannot be individual because it is inter-subjectively valid.

Nevertheless, the fact that some form–content associations are inter-subjective does not imply that these are non-mental. This reasoning can beinvalidated by making explicit the two different senses of subjective con-founded in Saussurian reasoning:

We resist accepting subjectivity as a ground floor, irreducible phenomenonof nature because, since the seventeenth century, we have come to believethat science must be objective. But this involves a pun on the notion ofobjectivity. We are confusing the epistemic objectivity of scientificinvestigation with the ontological objectivity of the typical subject matterin science in disciplines such as physics and chemistry. Since science aimsat objectivity in the epistemic sense that we seek truths that are not


dependent on the particular point of view of this or that investigator, it hasbeen tempting to conclude that the reality investigated by science must beobjective in the sense of existing independently of the experiences in thehuman individual. But this last feature, ontological objectivity, is not anessential trait of science. (Searle, 1994, p. 5)

According to this distinction, subjective in the third premise of the reasoningpresented above must be understood in a strictly epistemic sense, whilesubjective in the conclusion has an ontological sense. The fallacy has ledlinguistics as well as psychology to the erroneous conclusion that meaningcannot be ontologically subjective (see C) given its epistemic objectivity(see P3). From the fact that linguistic meaning is intersubjectively valid it iserroneously concluded that it cannot be mental.

The idea that what is ontologically subjective is epistemically subjectiveconstitutes one of the essential premises of the anti-psychological thinking atthe end of the 19th century, which constituted the origin of the eliminationof subjective experience as a foundation for meaning. This anti-psychological thinking is clearly evident in the writings of one of thefounders of formal semantics, namely Frege (see Levine, 1999). Whenintroducing the famous distinction between reference—the object referred toby the sign—and sense—the ‘mode of presentation of the reference’ (Frege,1892/1962, p. 39)—Frege discusses whether the sense can be considered amental content. His answer is a negative one, basically due to sense’sobjective character, which can be ‘a common property of many, andtherefore is not a part or mode of the individual soul’ (p. 42). Although thesense does not correspond to an element of the external world, it has,however, to be independent of the subject, due to its objectivity.

The objectivization of ‘sense’ through its ontological separation from thecontents of consciousness was functional to Frege’s goal of ensuring a non-ambiguous referential foundation for his Begriffschrift, the ideal languagethat would allow the linguistic unification of the analytic and syntheticsciences. In the logical-positivist view, where ‘things’ and ‘symbols’ belongto disjunct classes, an ideal language warranted a format of precise thoughtfor the representational mind. For this ‘to-think-is-to-calculate’ conceptionto work, the class of manipulated symbols must have pre-existent relationswith their respective referents. This condition is indeed necessary forDescartes’ mechanical automata, Leibniz’s universal grammar, the ideallanguage of analytic philosophy, Turing’s machine, and certainly forChomsky’s generative grammar. In the Fregean framework, the separationof the ‘sense’ from the subjective mental life is indispensable to warrant thementioned condition.

The target of Frege’s criticism is idealistic subjectivism, which locatesmeaning in a transcendental spirit. Subjectivism does not give clear answersto the important question regarding the origin of significance or its relationto referential function. Frege’s solution to the dilemmas of subjectivism is to


bind meaning to reference, in such a way that all phenomenologicalexperience not related to the referential function is excluded from theobjective conceptual domain—the ‘sense’. The individual/society dichotomyis also expressed in the false choice between meaning as a creation of theindividual soul and meaning as Platonic concept. In both alternatives,ontological and epistemic subjectivity are fused together.

In recent decades, however, psychology has been coming closer to asociocultural view of mental processes that is considerably different fromthe concept of mind that was subject to anti-psychological criticism in the19th century. This shift is expressed in the rediscovery of the classicalauthors in Soviet psychology (Vygotsky, 1962, 1978; Wertsch, 1985, 1991)and in Soviet literary science (Bakhtin, 1981; Hermans, 1996), together withthe American pragmatists (J.M. Baldwin, 1894, 1896a, 1896b; James,1890/1983; Mead, 1934; Peirce, 1931–1935, 1958; see Dodds, Lawrence, &Valsiner, 1997; Joas, 1993; Shank, 1998; Smythe & Chow, 1998; Valsiner& Van der Veer, 2000). For different reasons, from diverse theoreticalgroundings and with a range of emphases, these authors represent thecommon idea that the self results from the internalization of external—i.e.social—relations. In a naturalized conception of mind, the latter is not seenas given beforehand, but as emerging and being formed on the basis of thesocial interactions in which human beings are involved from birth. Thisleads us to a framework in which subjectivity is seen as a social product:psychic life as we experience it every day would be unthinkable without thesocial processes in which the subject participates from birth. Thus, theintersubjective world is constitutive of the subjective world:

The ‘social’ is usually thought of in binary opposition with the ‘individual’,and hence we have the notion that the psyche is individual while ideologyis social. Notions of that sort are fundamentally false. The correlate of thesocial is the ‘natural’, and thus ‘individual’ is not meant in the sense of aperson, but ‘individual’ as a natural, biological specimen. The individual,as possessor of the contents of his own consciousness, as author of his ownthoughts, as the personality responsible for his thoughts and feelings,—such an individual is a purely socioideological phenomenon. . . . Everysign as sign is social, and this is no less true for the inner sign than for theouter sign. (Volosinov, 1929/1973, p. 34)

Thus it follows that a content can be subjective, that is, can occur in asubject’s mental domain, and be intersubjective at the same time. Further-more, the conceptual tools available to subjects to perceive and understandtheir world in a coherent manner are necessarily intersubjective and there-fore objective. From the observation that a given content is objective, thereis no reason to conclude that the same content is necessarily non-subjectiveand belongs to a Platonic superindividual world. Linguistic meanings cannotbe anywhere else but in the speakers’ heads, but this does not mean that they


are stored in the shape of fixed acontextual relations between form andcontent, as semantics and formal logic assert.

In a dialogical view of the self (Hermans, 1996; Hermans & Kempen,1993), it is not hard to understand that, epistemically, the dichotomybetween individual and society on which the concept of ‘meaning-in-itself’is based does not exist. Peirce and Vygotsky’s hypotheses about the socialformation of subjectivity weaken the implicit synonymy between epistemicsubjectivity—subjectivity in the sense of a knowledge that cannot begenerally valid—and ontological subjectivity—the fact that mental pro-cesses can only be experienced within the private realm. As a consequence,although linguistic comprehension is an undeniably private experience andtherefore subjective, it is also undeniable that the subject cannot understandthis experience as such unless he or she has internalized a conceptual set oftools that are intersubjectively constructed.

Overcoming the dichotomous view of the relation between individual andsociety, a goal pursued both by Peirce’s pragmatism and by sociogenetictheory, puts into question the theoretical basis that caused linguistic meaningto be taken out of phenomenological experience and reified as a structuralproperty of linguistic signs. If meaning’s ontological subjectivity is notopposed to its epistemic objectivity, then psychology is now able toreformulate the concept of linguistic meaning in a way that integrates bothaspects of the concept: objectivity and subjectivity.

Pragmatization and Semiotization of Meaning as Methods forIntegration of Objectivity and Subjectivity

So far, it can be concluded that it is necessary to correct the traditionaldefinition of meaning in a double sense: (1) it should be understood as aphenomenon that takes place inside the subject’s experience; and (2) itsepistemic objectivity should be considered compatible with the ontologicalsubjectivity of experience. The first correction implies the pragmatization ofmeaning, that is, its reconceptualization as a ‘meaning-for-somebody’, asubject- and context-dependent construction. Meaning is no longer seen as apre-existent abstract entity which is activated whenever language is used, butit is rather an ongoing construction which therefore depends on a myriad offactors, such as paralinguistic and non-linguistic cues, corporal and emo-tional arousal, comprehension background, and so on.

It is important to note that pragmatization of meaning is a consequence ofany theory that is distanced from a computational or mechanistic view of themind. Examples are current research programs like embodied cognition(Lakoff & Johnson, 1999; Thompson & Varela, 2001; Varela, Rosch, &Thompson, 1991) and affective neurosciences (Damasio, 1999). In bothcases, the radical foundation of mental processes on neurobiological and


basic corporal processes leads to the replacement of the disembodied‘meaning-in-itself’ by a pragmatized meaning. Similarly, within the boundedrationality research program (Gigerenzer & Goldstein, 1996), there areinteresting attempts to deal with the categorization problem, which leads toabandoning the view of meaning as abstract representation. In this direction,a categorization model has been proposed which is based on a simpleheuristic that stops looking for features to categorize a particular stimulus assoon as there is sufficient information to make a specific categorization, sothat it is not necessary to compare all of the stimulus’s features to idealprofiles stored in memory in order to make a categorization (Berrety, Todd,& Martignon, 1999). Aside from the advantages of the model in terms ofpsychological plausibility, it shows that categorization can occur without theactivation of an abstract representation, on the basis of a few cues.Categorization is in this sense contextually guided. Furthermore, consistentwith an ecological view of rationality, concepts should be contextuallysensible in the stronger sense, that is, the correctness of the categorizationshould be judged considering the environment in which the concept is used.Thus, a particular object could, in principle, be categorized in different waysaccording to the present ecological needs—in this regard see Olson’s (1970)classical work.

The second correction involves solving the problems of idealistic subjectiv-ism. If human individuality is formed in society, an ontological differencedoes not exist between subjective and intersubjective forms of meaning-fulness. Subjective consciousness is not transcendental, but rather itdevelops in the play of intersubjectively determined meaning constructions.Now, if we ask for the material of the social constructions which constituteconsciousness, we arrive at the concept of sign, whose social, but at thesame time experiential, nature allows an adequate access to meaningfulness.This movement implies the semiotization of meaning, that is, its revision asa complex subjective construction which employs a diversity of semiotic(and consequently intersubjective) elements, and which is permanentlymodified in communicative use. Meaning also requires an interpretationprocess, and therefore an interpreting subject. From this fact it does notfollow, however, that meaning is an interindividually different content.Rather, internal comprehension processes are based upon socially sharedinterpretive possibilities. Although to mean and to understand are internalprocesses, they are supported by many social elements, whose relativeweight can vary interindividually depending on the context of use. From thispoint of view, subjective comprehension always occurs through the use ofthe internalized social instrumental, and hence the subjective space remainsat all times within the limits and possibilities of intersubjectivity.

Approaches like the ‘epidemiology of representations’ (Sperber, 1996)and ‘memetic theory’ (Blackmore, 1999; Dawkins, 1976; Dennett, 1995)have also defended a socialized view of the mind. Although with different


nuances, they all propose gene-like or virus-like units of information(‘memes’ or ‘mental/public representations’), characterized by a tendency toself-reproduction or self-spreading. Individual minds are seen as an optimalmedium where these can subsist. Fashion, scientific theories, gestures andideas are all examples of self-replicators. The framework undoubtedlyovercomes the false dichotomy between mental contents and social contents.Nevertheless, these theories are not capable of explaining the individual useof language; diachronic variability of meanings and the contextual flexibilityof language use are questions that cannot even be formulated within thisframework. The reason is the exclusion of ontological subjectivity from theclass of natural phenomena.5 The naturalization of the mind proposed bymemetic theory and its variants implies the reconceptualization of the mindas a receptacle of elements that are meaningful in themselves, describedfrom a third-person perspective, and therefore decontextualized. Thus, thestructuralist/generativist hard core remains the same. The price to pay for theelimination of subjectivity is the creation of a metaphysical realm inhabitedby representations that are intrinsically meaningful.6

It could be counter-argued that the second proposed correction leads to thenegation of subjectivity—in the sense of ‘individuality’. However, properlyconsidered, subjectivity as an attribute of psychic life is not neglected byarguments against an individual/society dichotomization; rather, what isabandoned is the very idea that consciousness’s subjectivity consists of adominium proprium, apart from the objective, and is therefore unable to beapproached for scientific inquiry. It is still undeniable that the contents ofconsciousness are in a sense private, that is, that thoughts, feelings, pains,and the like, are accessible to the thinking, feeling subject in a way which iscompletely different from that of an eventual external observer. What is tobe questioned, however, is the conclusion, reached from the qualitativecharacter of such phenomena, that they constitute an epistemically non-objective domain.

The pragmatization and semiotization of meaning allow us to account forboth its variability and its objectivity. On the one hand, meaning is alwayscontextually determined, because it is a content of consciousness andconsequently it is construed within the experience of a subject, which isalways contextualized. On the other hand, the comprehension processutilizes multiple conventionalized cues. Even though their degree of con-ventionalization can vary, semiotic elements are always the result ofinternalizations of language games with others.

Conclusions

I have tried to show that the way in which cognitive psychology andpsycholinguistics use the concept of linguistic meaning is empirically


dubious and inconsistent with basic psychological knowledge shared bythese very disciplines. Most cognitive psychologists claim that linguisticmeaning is in some way contained in linguistic forms and, at the same time,that the meaning of an expression is the final product of an active andconstructive process on the part of the subject. Thus, a linguistic sign’smeaning is, at the same time, dependent on and independent of the subject.This contradiction has its origins in the illegitimate introduction intopsychological language of distinctions coming from the realm of linguistics(where they were valid). Many cognitive models are based on two assump-tions: (a) that the scholastic maxim aliquid stat pro aliquo—somethingstands for something else—exhaustively defines the sign; and (b) that thisdyadic unit—usually in the form of signification/signifier—is stored in themind and is recovered every time the sign is used. Besides the empiricalanomalies of this kind of model when trying to use a static model of sign toaccount for the contextual flexibility of meaning in daily use, this way ofunderstanding linguistic meaning confounds two different logical levels,namely the structural description of the intersubjective form/content regu-larities and the phenomenological experience of meaningful comprehension.This confusion often goes unnoticed by psychologists, who frequently usethe term semantics to refer to experiential meaningfulness and not tolinguistics’ superindividual ‘meaning-in-itself’.

This is not to say that the concept of ‘meaning-in-itself’ is totally withoutbasis. Actually it is based on empirically observable regularities betweenlinguistic forms and mental contents. However, based on its objectivity,linguists, philosophers and psychologists have concluded that meaningcannot be a content of consciousness. The mental contents of consciousnessthat are conventionally associated with given linguistic forms are thus takenout of subjective experience and fixed within a dyadic model of the sign,which leaves subject and context in parentheses. When placed outsidethe head, the ‘meaning-in-itself’—reified and ‘de-psychologized’—leadstowards the creation of a Platonic ‘third realm’ (Ryle, 1957/1990, p. 371);inside the head, it produces two kinds of entia mentalis—(epistemically)objective contents and (ontologically) subjective contents.

I have argued that overcoming the contradiction between the two uses ofmeaning requires us to realize the perspective taken towards the intention-ality of consciousness in both language games: when using linguisticmeaning referring to meaning-in-itself, one observes the phenomenon fromoutside the intentional experience of the subject who understands; when onetalks about meaning-making or making sense, one observes the phenomenonfrom within the experience of meaningfulness of the subject who under-stands. Both perspectives emphasize different aspects of the same phenom-enon: on the one hand, the intersubjectively valid regularities of someform–content associations; on the other, the intrinsically individual qualityof the linguistic comprehension process. Throughout this paper I have


questioned the ubiquitous idea that the subjective and objective aspects ofmeaning are mutually exclusive. Quite the opposite: both aspects can beintegrated once we go beyond a ‘Robinson Crusoe view’ of the humanbeing, that is, the Cartesian idea of logical pre-existence of the subject oversociety.

Notes

1. Currently, the clearest instance of the assumption of the ‘langue in the head’ isthe hypothesis of a ‘mentalese’ or ‘language of thought’ (Fodor, 1975).

2. In this sense can the famous dictum of Putnam be understood: ‘Cut the pie anyway you like, “meanings” just ain’t in the head!’ (Putnam, 1975, p. 227).

3. From Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.4. ‘Conventional’ in P1 refers to the descriptive fact that the same word produces

similar contents; it does not allude to the prescriptive determination of how andwhen a word is to be used. The determination of the ‘correct’ use of a languageis always historically and ontogenetically posterior to the spontaneous use oflanguage.

5. This point is already explicit in Dennett’s (1987) theory of intentional systems,where ‘intentionality’ is understood as an attribution made by an externalobserver about the behavior of an organism or system. Hence, it is an observer-relative property, not a factual one, as physical states are. According to this view,the sentence ‘The child forgot to do her homework’ has exactly the samereferential status as ‘This clock forgot how to work’; both of them refer to non-factual properties.

6. Sperber strictly represents the marriage of Durkheimian structuralist thought—expressed by the concept of ‘social representation’ (Sperber, 1989)—with thefunctionalist philosophy of mind through the concept of ‘mental representation’.Since both viewpoints propose characteristically third-person descriptions, Sperb-er’s theory cannot account for intentionality and ontological subjectivity: ‘Be-cause of these interactions [physical interactions with the environment], mentalrepresentations are, to some extent, regularly connected to what they represent; asa result, they have semantic properties, or “meaning”, of their own’ (Sperber,1996, p. 80).

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Acknowledgements. Preparation of this manuscript was supported byGrant C-13680/3 from the Fundacion Andes. I would like to thankKatherine Strasser, Luke Moissinac and three anonymous reviewers fortheir comments on an earlier version of this manuscript.

Carlos Cornejo (PhD, Cologne University, 2000) is Assistant Professorin psychology of language and theoretical psychology at the PontificiaUniversidad Catolica de Chile. His research interests include theoreticaland empirical aspects of meaning construction/processing, figurative lan-guage and pragmatism in psychology. Address: Escuela de Psicologıa, P.Universidad Catolica de Chile, Vicuna Mackenna 4860, Santiago, Chile.[[email protected]]


who says what the words say? - instituto chileno de terapia familiar

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