José Antonio Marina. Born in Toledo, Spain (1939). Is a philosopher, writer, essayist and educator. José Antonio Marina
surplus is professor of philosophy at the Institute Madrid's La Cabrera, Doctor Honoris Causa from the Polytechnic University of Valencia, also a lecturer and florist. He studied philosophy at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, having a companion to his friend and fellow writer Alvaro Pombo. During that time he read passionately Unamuno, founded magazines and directed several theater groups.
His research has focused on the study of intelligence and divergent thinking in particular of the mechanisms of artistic creativity (in the area of \u200b\u200blanguage in particular), scientific, technological and economic. As a disciple of Husserl can be considered an exponent of phenomenology English. Has developed a theory of intelligence which begins in neurology and concludes on ethics. His most recent books dealing with intelligence organizations and political structures. Wikimedia
press (Chronicle cultural supplement of El Mundo, El Semanal etc.), Radio and television. In recent years he has participated in talk shows and debates on Radio Nacional of Spain. He has written essays and articles and is author of the textbook of the subject "Education for Citizenship" published by SM. For his research draws on an extensive number of collaborators who are co-authors of their books. Generic forms adopted as the dictionary, the opinion or educational-historical novel.
; ; José Antonio Marina 
Here we present the first chapter of his book, published in 1998, The jungle Language:
I. KNOWLEDGE AND KNOW
(*)
begin my repertoire of amazement. Nobody considered the following nonsense: "Alexis did not know if his feelings for Sonia was love, gratitude, desire, compassion, or just the satisfaction of being loved." It is, however, a very strange sentence. How Alexis will not know how you feel if the feelings are necessarily conscious experiences? What happens is you can not recognize what he feels, is not known to place its experience within the plane of the emotional world it has. And until you do so, while not identifying their feelings get in the catalog sentimental culture has given him, where he identifies the expectations and the possible evolution of feeling, the content of his consciousness remains unclear, undefined. And this, precisely because it has no name.
This seems sensible. Alexis feels what is happening and could describe it. You only need to set out the features, causes, the intensity of their emotions. However, that description would seem too vague, loose and disengaged, because they do not get connected to the system of references affective Alexis and the others have. And this link would be made by the lexicon.
all have the impression that we know more about one thing when we know your name, print it at first seems little justification. Stroll through the Botanical Garden of Santo Domingo a strong morning sun and moist, and stumble on a giant plant deployed as a fan. 
seems that only had two dimensions. I'm surprised his colossal magnificence, this excess with tropical plants, he did say to Darwin in the tropical birds singing too, and all the living were too colorful, big, smug and varied. I go to see what it's called "Traveller's Tree" Ravenala madagascariensis musacea. Rilke remembered: I'll tell
gardeners 
seems that only had two dimensions. I'm surprised his colossal magnificence, this excess with tropical plants, he did say to Darwin in the tropical birds singing too, and all the living were too colorful, big, smug and varied. I go to see what it's called "Traveller's Tree" Ravenala madagascariensis musacea. Rilke remembered: I'll tell explain to me many flowers, bringing in huge chunks
of something
names of their perfumes.
Is something new to know the name of an object? Where does the impression that using the language I have seen it otherwise? What you get with the word is not new information, but a new way of managing information. The knowledge he had of the lush plant has not grown. But to know your name I can treat perceptual information with great ease. While the presence of the traveler's tree will continue to run out in my way, and his memory will inevitably blur, the word designating it will remain in memory, and I can think of that plant and talk about this plant and look at any time, although not clearly remember the power that now fascinates me. The tree is spoken more docile than the perceived tree. language gives me another advantage, since I can include a tree or love or jealousy or angelic thrones in the linguistic map of reality that I have and have been shaped to information received in language, which are many. Through the word we received the bulk of information that helps us learn to see reality, to order our experience and draw lessons of others. When we learn the lexicon sentimental assimilate ancestral knowledge about human feelings that instructs us about emotions, relationships, emotional journeys that will continue our experience. Through this teaching we have a collection of models that allows us to guide, understand, predict, sometimes life altering sentimental, confused. All our knowledge is systematized linguistically and therefore when we do not link our experience we believe we lost that file, not knowing how to read, understand, carry on what we feel as if we had received an unsigned letter, an appointment without a promise without contracting. We lack the key to decipher its meaning. We can not connect what we see with what we know.
How far does the influence of language? The so-called social constructivism, which are greatly exaggerated, emphasized the importance of linguistic processing of emotion. As Thoits, for example, innate emotions that need no cognitive mediation, but "only through language consciously know what we feel. Labels or cultural concepts learned in social interaction to associate environmental suggestions, internal feelings and expressive gestures ".1 This reminds me of an anecdote told by Margaret Mead. During one of his trips faraway islands, the brothers met a girl he had kidnapped members of a hostile tribe and asked them how they felt. "I do not know", replied, "because the boss has not told us yet what we feel."
The way the linguistic label influences the feelings clear in an example that I got from a book on linguistics but a treaty of psychotherapy. Albert Ellis says, and I agree with him that our beliefs have a decisive influence on our affections. Believes that our culture relates to the term "true love the following ideas:
1) You can love one and only a person.
2) True love lasts a lifetime.
3) The deep feelings of love ensure a stable and compatible marriage.
4) Sex without love is not ethical nor satisfactory. Love and sex go together.
5) Love can be easily used to develop and grow in the marital relationship.
6) Romantic love is far superior to conjugal love, the love of friends, sexual love and other kinds of love, and your existence will be miserable if you experience it intensely.
7) If you lose a person you want you should feel deeply grieved romantically or depressed for a long time and can not experience love again until a legitimate mourning is complete.
8) love is necessary that all the time to recognize that someone loves you.
These ideas are integrated into complex feelings, creating expectations, frustrations, duties, etc. The subjects say to themselves (or implicitly believe) things like "I love only one person and I am a scoundrel if I love others," "I will marry a person you love romantically and I will be devastated if he / she other / not suit me "," My romantic feelings should last forever and there's something not right in my feelings if they wilt after a relatively short space, it shows that I really love, "" If I do not experience intense and lasting romantic love I can not be satisfied with other types of feelings of love, at most I will have a happy medium there. "
The moment a likely feeling confused is labeled with the word "love", we transfer the entire block of expectations, forecasts, duties corresponding to the word. It is easy to see how far the situation can be dramatic. The word can become a bill of exchange, seemingly harmless, but can lead to bankruptcy at the time of maturity. This wealth of information, evaluation, beliefs given to us through language, which is a great system, a colossal structure, a formidable tool.
All this I knew the reader. The fact is that the language produces an initial confusion because its goal is to teach us what we already know. Is indeed a science of observation, but differs from the others that the linguist does not need to see anything out of it, since it aims to study what they already know: language. Write a grammar of the language that dominated almost the same as studying a part of their memory. This peculiarity makes us think that human beings have two ways of owning and managing information: the "known" or "know." Just know, more or less precisely what that is explicitly conscious state. On the contrary, knowledge is the permanence of any information or skill memory. When you become conscious knowledge. A good thing to know Castilian and another to know how many words designating feelings known. Something tells
Ferdinand de Saussure, the father of modern linguistics when he states that the language (langue) is a subjective capacity, "a grammatical system existing virtually every brain, or more precisely, in the brains of a group of individuals. " The language, he warned, is not complete in any subject or any dictionary. There is more than perfect social mass. This existence of language as a system shared by a group opposing the 'speech' (parole), which is "an individual act of will", a personal event. I speak a language. Language puts us halfway between the personal and communal. We speak a language voluntarily imposing our will. And I will explain that this mixture of lordship and bondage poses interesting and dramatic problems.
linguist makes clear what we know when we know a language, for that, you just go to update its implicit knowledge, which is no easy task. In doing so, she joined the group of scientists who seek to know what being the subject is beyond his consciousness. So in praise and spoke wit refutation of linguistic analysis. Chomsky's work, who always considered himself a psychologist who sought to discover the depth of the language mechanism, clearly shows this relationship to depth psychology. For him, the syntax is a tacit knowledge, an implicit knowledge. So does our intelligence. We have in mind a complex semantic map of reality and rules of use that apply with great ease, but we can only "know" in a complex work of reflection and analysis. Are tacit knowledge, folded, implicit, anonymous.
The word is a sign. This assertion is based around the world, but the trick is to clarify what is the sign. I would like to demonstrate that knowledge is a sign of bending, tacit. Is something we know but do not know. The real meaning, psychological, concrete of a word that has a subject, is something that the person knows but does not know. Can be defined as the set of information that explains all the uses made of that word, the tight and loose, serious and playful. Intelligence makes powerful synthesis of information, which saves memory. Well, the word allows us to access and use this complex treasure. It looks more like a fishing rod than a box. Thanks to her retrieve information in memory Aduna.
not just the word, but all are signs of grammatical forms. The syntax or verb conjugations. The semantics is at the bottom of all the linguistic event. Do not forget, the semantics is the huge array language. From it comes all the varied offspring. The subjunctive, for example, is a way of signifying. What has happened or will happen for sure is expressed in the indicative. But the condition, the possibility, doubt, desire, the uncertain future require us to use the subjunctive. We can say that is a subjective way, which speaks not of reality but of uncertainty, the possibility that combines real-time relative time. "I will attend as soon as I call it." What belongs dimension of reality that "call"?
Changing active to passive voice is also a meaningful change: change the word picture in which action is contemplated. It is not the same as saying: "Charles sent Mary a letter" that "The letter was sent to Mary by Carlos'. Even the phrase "Carlos sent a letter to Mary" is identical to the first example. In each of the three options highlighted item. The shipment, the sender, the recipient. Great writers are well aware of these subtle linguistic resources. The World is
the sum of our implicit knowledge. It is, therefore, a subjective and personal phenomenon. The field of what is perceived is very narrow (limited to our sensory field) and must be completed by the report. At this moment I see my desk, a window, trees, cloudy sky, but I know I'm in my office behind me is a floor, a library, walls, street, more trees, the city the mountain, plateau, sea, Africa, the South Pole. I do not see, but I know. I live in the suture of perception and memory, the line connecting the known and the effect, because these books are my books, I read, annotated, supported, enjoyed. And this picture is from a person whom I love. In this vital area where it meets the present and the known, perceived and remembered, I call it the World. My World is not the reader, though both have nuclear ingredient information that comes from reality, and this causes overlap greatly. Because we like, we understand. Because we are different, we misunderstand. Without getting inquiries from now on, we could say we live in the same reality but in different worlds.
This complex web of perceptions and memories depends on the constitutive activity of my mind. To speak with a philosophical technicality, I am the transcendental subject of my world, its creator, Though not think reality (my table is there and the window and the trees), I have to recreate it in me, according to the peculiar perceptual systems of the human species and the peculiarities of my own self. My world bears little resemblance to the world of the magpie from the top of the tree screaming and shiny things IAEA. My world seems too little to the world of the Marquis de Sade. I appropriate the reality of my way, but this need to build my own personal world, it is absolutely inevitable, and that makes all objects between those who live in the product of the constituent activities of my mind, I am not isolated from the alien worlds. The World of the other is in mine with a complex function, which allows the establishment of a "joint World", share, communicate, highlighting the personal peculiarities.
Since the most effective way of communicating with alien worlds, and their subjects is language, the way the language involved in such complex relationships can give us the key to understanding the formation of the joint world we live .
One of the prejudices that have hindered more understanding of language is to believe that all meaning is linguistic. Not so. The ability to utter meaning is prior to language. As explained in the Theory of creative intelligence, grasp of reality giving meaning to data that we perceive through the senses. These news coming form a continuum of perception, a backdrop on which we "identify" the contours of things. In the nearby vegetation organize the various shades of green in superficial and deep planes, which are cut into each other. To isolate and identify a pattern I uttered perceptual meaning. Perceptual pattern that will later allow me to capture the likeness of other things, the common invariants. The way the language is open. The child can learn to speak because previously is capable of uttering meanings. Hörmann writes, "analyzes the adult verbal reference to the structure cognitive, but not language, which is already given in it. "
The first approach to reality allows us to separate the trivial from the significant, relevant from the irrelevant. Experience means "a journey." However, each World is building its twists and turns of the experience. A world that can be impersonal and very private. An example of the latter we have in Pessoa:
"I find deeper meaning in the scent of sandalwood, in old cans lying on the pile of rubbish in a box of matches fall by the wayside, two dirty paper roll a windy day and chase down the street in tears human. Poetry is awe and admiration like a godsend to be in full consciousness of his fall and shocked by things. As someone who knew the soul of things and endeavor to recall that knowledge in mind that it was not and had known them, not with these forms and under such conditions, but not remembering anything else. "
could say that poet's task, at least of the great poets - is to create non-linguistic meanings first and then shaping. Perceiving
get information (per-ICSC) and make sense. But catching and giving are acts contrary. Can we make them compatible? To formulate a question more technical: extract information or build? It is difficult to think that I build the jeweled look of the garden in autumn. The station has turned green into gold and copper, and limit myself to see the seductive work as mysterious alchemy. The trees are there and also a fascinating outfit.
Not really. Now, as so often, I am a victim of the illusion of passivity. What I perceive as the tree is, suddenly, a temporary station on the long road of light, which is a courageous messenger brings news. Before my eyes tree, the tree is a pattern of electromagnetic energy. Visible light, which is a band of the energy spectrum between ultraviolet and infrared - has landed on the surface of the leaves, which has absorbed some of its radiation, and after that brief stay reached the bottom of my eye, the retina, with its message .
Light brings us news, no doubt, but these signals are converted into information as a receiver in this case the human brain gives way (in-shape). If our system had visual acuity of an electron microscope, would I see trees? No. The animals that perceive the gravitational fields must perceive a landscape that can not imagine. The news, data, signals become significant reality, become in information, when they find a suitable recipient. There is, therefore, not receiving information. There is, of course, without sender information. Without the eye there is a deep green cypress, although there is a light radiation. No cypress, either.
forget that we are not speaking the language, even if they seem. We intend to attend the birth of the word. Continued. What is the meaning of perception? In an organization of stimuli. It is possible that the first act of organization is to make out a figure on a background, the stain on the wall, the cloud in the sky, the tree on the hillside, a melody on the background noise. In the garden the colors are grouped together and the dark green folds of the other dark green bush and away from adjacent bush green. There are a few friendly link with other data. And I am witness to that match. There is a process of 'identification'. The baby has done and points the finger when he wants, maybe the moon, alas! A bright circle on the dark sky, or green volume was wrapped in his cloak greener on itself, thus separating the magnolia cypress is distinguished from everything else, and the baby may be stored that way, as a synthesis of many looks and an encouragement to many more, in memory. This act isolate, unify and identify the origin of meaning. Also the language.
Once in memory, this meaning, the perceptual organization, that haste on the sky black, later know that it is a swallow, that throb restless after empalabraré as fear or love or both, performs a function formidable. Becomes a "pattern recognition". I will serve to absorb things that are alike. The perception of a resemblance is a feat bordering on the incomprehensible. Capturing the same easy, but understand that from the air curling storm and fury that I curl to me like there is violence and lack hazard control and is almost impossible to explain.
Spring is a girl who sings the verses.
That says Rilke. How can we understand the inconsistency? We thank the computer science have helped us to perceive the complexities of the act of recognizing something. When claimed that computers recognize objects realized it was a huge undertaking difficulty. The simplest solution was to provide a standard computer with which to compare the new information, if agreed, the object was recognized. This procedure, used for example in the bar code was very simple but very effective. There that have a pattern for each object. It was not enough to have the pattern "A" to recognize all aes. You had to have as many patterns as possible means of 'A'. Lyrics quatrains, beaked, upper, lower, quirky, loose, bonded, austere or baroque.
Compared to more powerful computers, human beings operate on this with an arrogant effectiveness. Recognition seems distant, we complete information, we take a figure to another perceptual invariants perceive with great ease. Recognize a face in profile, facing front, with long or short hair, smiling or serious, grimacing or serene. And the same goes for similar metaphor. If I say 'The sea is a standing invitation, "read the words even when they know that the sea has no guest room.
Where we find a recognition phenomenon we have to admit the existence of a "pattern" or "schema" of recognition that makes it possible. It is a pity that this little thing you forget to Wittgenstein. He will forgive him because he was an innovator, but not apologize to his disciples, who are obstinate, ie persistent in error.
I advise you to retain the word scheme because it will quickly come into play as the protagonist.
on this ability to give meaning to the signals that come environment or ourselves will build linguistic activity. A sound, a gesture, a line on the wall will become representatives of a meaning. So far we can say that there is nothing new. The vervet monkeys have four screaming to designate four types of predators. Perceptual stimuli, which we call the first set of signals, have been dubbed with another set of signals that come to function as artificial stimuli. The vervet monkey is screaming up the trees because they've heard the cry "snake" has not seen the danger. Heard a symbol of danger and fled as if he had seen the snake.
Language is also a sign of signals which has been releasing a mere automaton, as it does scream and vervet monkeys climbing. The versatility and effectiveness of this second signal system depends on two things. We have learned to make meaning from words. Language learning is that. The mother is forcing the child, who wants to understand and be understood, to put meaningful content to the gesture, and then the modulated noise and long out of his mouth. Though they're used to seeing, or precisely why, I have to remind you that this is a very unnatural process. The natural thing is that the production of meanings precede the intervention of language.
The second great skill is that the subject learns to utter words, ie to create such artificial stimuli eficacísimos that free you from the tyranny of the stimulus. It is as if we learned to use a strict conditioning system to make it an infinite repertoire of incentives, rewards and punishments. An amazing way to get rid of determinism using deterministic. But we'll have time to talk about it.
What adds language to the production of meaning is perceptual unreality. Meanings allows us to handle broken off from its origin, the situation that arose from the practice that fed them. I can say, "Today, the sea has made the outfits." Is a significant statement but unreal. He joined the expression outfits with the words sea, to see what happens. There has been a whimsical statement. Today the sea is gray, just eloquent, and it seems that the wave is boring and pure commitment. The waves do not have the joyous fun of other days, but the precision and monotony of an assembly line. This morning the sea makes waves as it could make screws. Find little difference between Neptune and Ford.
Here we come across a paradoxical feature of human intelligence: handle with unreal reality. It turns out that we provide ideas to reality, we assimilate through concepts, trade with it using words, signs, symbols. We invent truths. (Do not think that is a typo. In setting forth a proposal to give reality a chance to become corroborative of truth, a trade that could not carry it alone without the intervention of human intelligence.) Express as saying them things they never dreamed of being said. Thanks to these firms can undertake very real unreal. Before being real, the cathedral of Florence was a reality thought, an unreality that guided the deft hand that drew the line I knew that later led the hammering of the quarry. Brunelleschi drew the dome, but in order to make real the possibility intended, the machines also drew that made possible the construction of the dome, and are a wonderful art shows rationalist. So, of unreality unreality, we come to the reality, after a long journey of ideas, sketches, drawings, scores, maps, plans, curses and cheers. In the end, the action inevitably inserts us in the real.
Finally, human intelligence knows the reality and invents possibilities brewing and managing unreality. And the great tool to do so is language.
Talk is an activity, of course, but we need to know is how the term emerged from the other skills of intelligence and how in turn refines and expands.
difficult to explain this reciprocal causality. Our intelligence is linguistic. Think, plan, communicate primarily with words. How could then move intelligence to invent the language? Prelinguistic What tools could outdo itself? This problem intrigued linguists previous centuries, some of which ended up thinking that God should have given the language of men all at once, with the present perfect tense and subjunctive. Maybe the old Latin thought something similar. Fate, fatum, is primarily a word, a message. Fatum fax comes from the word, it is an impersonal word expresses something confusing, mysterious, "as it is mysterious," says Benveniste, a great linguist, "the arrival of the first words to the mouth of a child." The infans was not received from the gods the gift of speech. In 1866, seven years after the publication of The Origin of Species, the Linguistic Society of Paris, and tired of speculation, forbade the further discussing the issue of language origin of the species. In retrospect
their results in this vast and wonderful structure, and that efficacious polymorphic and skill, the invention of language is an inexplicable feat. In just over three years, a child learns what it must have cost the human species tens of thousands of years to achieve, and this becomes mysterious rush the process. I remember the ironic explanation given Valéry of poetic inspiration. A poem that has taken three months of trial and error, remains, of corrections, rejections, of chance, it is read in three minutes by another individual. "This rebuilt, as the cause of this discourse, an author may be able to speak well, ie, an author, impossible. Musa called on the author. "
When the realities that have a long genesis studied structurally synchronously, regardless of their pedigree, they become opaque and incomprehensible. This is how all mythologies, including linguistic mythologies. The language was a very long social development. The need to collaborate due to press for a being capable of stopping the pull of the stimulus started to make artificial stimulus-words-to direct their own and other pulses.
At one point in its evolution, man learned to say no to the stimulus. Prevented an orderly response on it for millennia. We do not know how it happened, but I refuse to imagine, warning the reader should take this paragraph as a literary exercise, not a scientific presentation. Our ancestor's face elusive and long arms bison hunting on the moor. Runs across a landscape of scents and tracks. Dragged down by the tracks, jump, run, turn your head, explore, sniff. The dam is a light at the end of a tunnel. There is only the fierce attraction and submission sleepwalker. Just know that anxiety is appeased by following that direction. No hunting, vent. Not pursue a bison: run by a visual and olfactory runners excite him. The tracks will push. Signs trigger the movements of their legs, with the accurate automation with altering the beating of his heart. There is nothing to think about, because you do not think. His brain calculates and drives him. Is subject to the tyranny of 'If A. .. then B ". If-then sequence as used by the computer. If you see the dark figure of the animal in the bush entreluz, runs biased (to cut him off.) If too close, howls (to attract mates for horde). If the stimulus loosened its reins, stop, shake, turn around (for uncirse the reins again and tied it again to continue his career). Do not know any of the brackets. As the sleepwalker guide your steps and avoids the obstacles without being conscious of it, our ancestor was slipped over the centuries by the barren badlands of prehistory.
Transfiguration occurred a mysterious day when seeing the trail stopped in his tracks instead of speeding it up and looked at the track. Fearless endured the push of encouragement. And, once and forever, was released from his tyrannical dynamism. Those pictures in the sand were and were not bison. There appeared the sign, the great intermediary. And the man could watch this without running track. Suddenly he was able to think the bison but not in their eyes, or his nose or in their ears, their desire to be present no bison. Could have without having hunted bison. And, moreover, indicate to their peers. It must have been fascinating discovery of representation. When I visit prehistoric caves, such as Puente Viesgo I see on the walls and the handprints repeated, I imagine the surprise, worry, wonder of our ancestors to discover that the rock was the form of a hand without hand.
fantastic
This description is not arbitrary. It is inspired by the stories they tell us the education of deaf-blind children. The biographies of Marie Heurtin or Helen Keller, to name the best known, are pathetic and wonderful stories. They witnessed the glorious moment in which a chained subjectivities, subject to spasmodic impulses, agitated by feelings and experiences are not controlled, living without progress, without intelligence, without hope, are able to understand a sign. More Moreover, they are able to utter. Something they do they can absolutely dominate far. The reality remains a hubbub of stimuli and a whirl of self feelings. A fertile quiet descends upon the children, suddenly, with a fast moving, active subjects are discovered, owners of themselves, able to generate, control and direct their occurrences: smart. And all at once, as if a new procedure was instituted in his life. And the amazing thing is that from the time they learn very quickly. It is as if they had taken over the control of behavior by a quick raid. The following chapters will give a possible explanation for this phenomenon.
Bronowski noted that the central feature and configured in the evolution of human language is the ability to insert a delay between receipt of an incoming signal and issuing a verbal or nonverbal response. Is telling the story of the bison in a more sober. This delay is possible and also makes it possible: 1) a gradual separation of the "burden" affective communication regarding its information content, 2) the extension of the model, ie the ability to also refer to things past and future, 3) internalization of speech (Vygotsky), so the language can become an instrument of reflection; and 4) the ability to separate and collect communications through analysis and synthesis.
Without the ability to inhibit responses, and buying space and time to take the lead, monkeys continue to be accelerated.
A look at the way children learn language helps us understand the linguistic process. I said that the child is non-linguistic meanings from birth. The language is to label those meanings or induce the formation of new ones. Child psychologists know that children often hipergeneralizar the meaning of words, extending it to collide limits to adults. Can use the word ball to designate any toy, an orange, the stone spheres of the entrance to the park or the moon. It's hard to know what the child thinks. "A supergeneralización such as these," indicating that the child believes that ball covers all things round? "Writes Nelson. "Does it indicate the roundness per se or rather that the moon looks like the ball? Or perhaps that the child would like to play with the ball / moon? "
Within a few years, the language of children and adults are homogeneous. What happened in the interval? There has been a process of adjustment through which the child has received constant characters. If the language was so only expressive, be heterogeneous. One should not seek uniformity. But language has a communicative function, and to communicate with family and friends the child needs to understand and be understood, and this makes him aware of the errors it commits. And in order to communicate better editing, aided by his great ability to recognize invariant patterns. As Bréal wrote: "The goal of language is to be understood. The boy, for months, exercising his tongue to utter articulate vowels and consonants. Many failures before uttering a syllable clearly! Grammatical innovations occur in the same way, with the difference that helps them a whole people. Many awkward constructions, incorrect, dark, before finding one that will, if not the right word, at least sufficient expression of thought! "Schlesinger called semantic assimilation process by which the child set their own categories to the categories of adults. And Husserl spoke of mutual correction established between the different subjects and allows consistency between the different personal worlds.
This interaction is what really sets the language as a pool. Where is the language?, We might ask. It is a superficiality that is at the dictionary and grammar. What's on the books is just a set of meanings that the reader can decipher if you know it. A linguistic signifier is always referring to an intelligence that makes a sign.
Language exists in the minds of members of a group, in the same way that the uses, customs, beliefs, fashions. And so he joint existence. Has what Ortega called a "collective force." Each individual needs to have, and has in fact, with the remaining speakers of their group, which provides a continuous linguistic movement. The language comes and goes, runs, and in this dynamic state charges a floating stability. The whole system is self-regulating through interactive communication and feedback mechanisms. The expression and understanding are the two files that are matching the profiles of the words.
Linguistic meaning is in the field of influence of two disparate processes: one that leads to uniformity and another variation. Without this, it would not communicate. Without this would be an instrument too poor to express themselves. The phenomena caused by the two processes are:
HOMOGENIZATION ; Need to understand
CHANGE need to express
Community
individuality to the general trend ; Tendency to need to identify difference
Need to distinguish
educational transmission
linguistic creation grammar rules ; ; Langue
style ; ; Words
Competencia Performance
The tension between homogeneity and heterogeneity encourages me to introduce the concept of "tolerance semantics." Each word allows a tolerance of fluidity, change, blur its meaning. Bug or heap are inherently vague terms. The limit of tolerance is the word semantic continue to serve to communicate. Literature, that somehow language is always a violation, every effort seeks to expand its scope. Some writers have played to be in the limit, as the reader can check the following de Cortázar, taken from chapter 68 of Rayuela:
"Just Amal El noema him, he crowded her and fell in the clémiso hidromurias in wild ambonia in sustalos exasperating. Every time he tried to lick the incopelusas, got caught in a querulous tears and had to face the noval envulsionarse, feeling a little step is espejunaban Arnillas is going apeltronando, reduplimiendo, to be tended like that trimalciato of ergomanina you have dropped some of cariconcia fílulas. And yet it was just the beginning, because at one point she tordulaba the hurgalios, consenting to its orfelunios approached gently. Hardly entreplumaban, something like a ulucordio the encrestoriaba, the extrayustaba paramovía and suddenly was clinón the esterfurosa convulcante of matrices, the orgumio embocapluvia jadehollante, the esproemios of a sobrehumítica agopausa merpasmo. Evohé! Evohé! Volpe at the crest of murelio, felt balparamar, pearly and Marula. Troc trembled, fell due the marioplumas, and everything is in a deep pinic resolviraba in argutendidas niolamas of gauze, in Carini almost cruel that ordopenaban to gunfias limit. "
is a scene of physical love, ironically evoked by skillful mix of syntax and words wisely kept deformed.
I said before a word was folding sign of knowledge stored in the memory of the speaker, the result of a long learning process, which uses phrases, experience, recognition of similar, specific cases, they form the semantic content of that word. They lived concepts that accumulate information from many sources: perceptual, linguistic, emotional, general knowledge, specific cases. It is this diversity of content, the concept-what makes it so powerful and flexible language. Precisely what logicians consider linguistic imperfection. To handle such complex semantic representation by a word is a powerful tool that, like all great powers, has its dangers. Already
we will see that the content of concepts is heterogeneous lived: perceptual and conceptual, linguistic and plastic, emotional and informative. For now I will serve to explain Borges:
"In my life I always had tigers. Reading is so interwoven with the other habits of my days I really do not know if my first tiger was a tiger in a print or that, now dead, whose stubborn back and forth across the cage as I was spellbound from the other side of the bars iron. My father liked the encyclopedias, I judge them, I'm sure, for pictures of tigers they offered me. I remember now Montaner and Simon (a white Siberian tiger and Bengal Tiger) and a carefully drawn in pen and jumping, which was something of a river. To these were added visual tigers tigers made of words: the famous fire of Blake (Tyger, tyger, burning bright) and the definition of Chesterton: It's a terrible symbol of elegance. When read as a child, the Jungle Books, no longer just that Shere Khan was the villain of the fable, not the friend of the hero. I would remember, and I can not, a winding path tiger by the brush of a Chinese who had never seen a tiger. That tiger Platonic searchable in the book of Anita Berry Art for Children. These tigers of sight and word I have added another I was revealed by our friend Currini, in the curious zoological garden named Animal World and refrains from prison.
The last tiger is flesh and bone. With clear and happiness I got scared that tiger, whose tongue licked my face, indifferent or caring whose grip was delayed in my head, and that, unlike its predecessors, smell and weight. Do not say this tiger that amazed me is more real than the others, as an oak is not more real than the forms of a dream, but I want to thank our friend here, that tiger meat and bone that morning my senses perceived and whose image comes as the Tigers return the books. " This
Borges is the tiger, his concept experienced. The account in Atlas (1984), which is included in Volume III of the Complete Works edited by Emecé, p. 426.
These basic semantic representations that have been formed by alluvium, have contents that have not been subjected to criticism and can be contradictory. I suspect that many misunderstandings, and more than a "psychological conflict, are caused because the concept designated by a word lived encompasses contradictory features. Duo if dicunt idem, non est idem, said an ancient proverb. If two say the same ... it is not the same. When I began to teach ethics to young boys, I was struck the resistance opposed to the word perfection. They felt that something perfect could not be good. A well-known politician said at that time that "the perfect fascist era." I thought the same as my students. Among the predicates of the word perfection experienced was, for example, the connotation of complete, finished, dead, appeal to a final criterion, dictatorial, dogmatic, arrogant. Nothing alive can be perfect. Democratic Nothing apparently could be perfect. This contradiction was not known lived and equivocation of the word. An example
I am very interested. The word spontaneous. When we use the word? What is a spontaneous behavior? For one thing, it means an unintended behavior. "I came out spontaneously, 'we say. Do not call it an act of spontaneous thought, deliberately targeted, but that comes naturally to us. This is surprising if we realize that spontaneous means precisely "voluntary." The Castilian accept this word, in the sixteenth century as an adaptation of the Latin sponte, which means "voluntarily." Today, not only in English, has come to mean the opposite. Why this semantic shift has occurred? What basic unconscious semantic organization has motivated him?
suspect was due to an identification of three terms: spontaneity, naturalness and freedom. The three words have become synonymous. This it sounds acceptable and inconsequential, but it's not whether you believe that volunteering becomes an antonym of them all, and the same happens to deliberate. The natural, spontaneous, free, opposes the voluntary and deliberate. At the same time, is introduced as a synonym for spontaneous instinct while banishing the reflective to the field of opposites. The separation of the blocks has been completed. To one side are the good: the natural spontaneous, instinctive and free. In the other, voluntary, reflective deliberate, they embody the role of villains. The suspect is voluntary, and only instinct deserves the presumption of innocence. We have found it seems the "freedom without will", which is great wonder.
How these concepts are organized experienced? Form a mental lexicon, rich and active in our memory. The introduction to a "dictionary of feelings" has led us to go back beyond those academically constructed lexicons to find their history alive and pulsating fluid: the mental dictionary.
(*) Taken from Marina, José Antonio (1999): The jungle of language. Barcelona. Anagram. Chapter one, pp. 27-49.
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