Words and Minds

How We Use Language to Think Together

Neil Mercer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• ISBN:
  9781134590834
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Words and Minds takes a lively and accessible look at how we use language to combine our mental resources and get things done. Examining everyday language and drawing on a wide range of research, but always with a light style, Neil Mercer provides a unified account of the relationship between thought and language.
Mercer analyses real-life examples of language being used effectively, or otherwise, in many different settings, including workplaces and schools, the home, the internet and the courtroom, and offers practical insights into how we might improve our communication skills.
Words and Minds will appeal to anyone interested in language and the psychology of everyday life.

1 Language as a tool for thinking

Much has been written about the relationship between language and thought, but one aspect of that relationship has not been given the attention I believe it deserves, despite its familiarity and importance in our lives. This is our use of language for thinking together, for collectively making sense of experience and solving problems. We do this ‘interthinking’ in ways which most of us take for granted but which are at the heart of human achievement. Language is a tool for carrying out joint intellectual activity, a distinctive human inheritance designed to serve the practical and social needs of individuals and communities and which each child has to learn to use effectively. Developing a better understanding of how we can use it to combine our intellectual resources has some useful, practical outcomes, particularly for education.

People use language every day to think and act together, and it is that normal, everyday use with which I am concerned here. Throughout the book, I will use examples of language to illustrate and explain the various ways in which it is used. These examples come from recordings made by me, or by other researchers, in homes, offices, workshops, schools, courtrooms and several other locations. The first, Sequence 1.1, is given below. It is part of a conversation I recorded when three people were trying to do a crossword puzzle. Joan and Mary are two retired sisters who spend a lot of time doing puzzles. At the point at which the sequence begins, they have been trying to finish one for a while, when a friend of theirs, Tony, comes to visit.

Sequence 1.1: A crossword puzzle

Mary: I bet he can help us do, with our crossword clue.

Joan: Where? (looks for paper, then reads) Here ‘Material containing a regular pattern of small holes’ eight letters blank blank blank B blank A blank D.

Mary: Regular holes. Oh we have struggled.

Joan: I thought, perhaps the base stuff that you use to make a tapestry. Cloth.

Mary: Cloth. Lace I thought, that has holes.

Joan: Braid?

Tony: Embroidery?

Joan: It won’t fit braid, will it (checks). No. Ye s it will. (All look at puzzle together)

Tony: Embroidery, is there something called broid?

Mary: Broid?

Tony: Wait a minute, material, needn’t not be cloth, it could be like material goods.

Mary: Construction material?

Joan: Board? Some kind of board? Chipboard?

Tony: No, what’s it, pegboard!

Mary: Pegboard! (Which is the right answer)

Let us consider the order in which things are done in this sequence. First, Mary says that she ‘bets’ their guest could help with the crossword. Her remark functions as an invitation for Tony to participate in some joint problem-solving. Joan’s action shows that she interprets the remark this way, as she looks for the problem and reads it to Tony. Mary and Joan also tell Tony what they have attempted and achieved so far. A crucial part of this process, then, is that the participants share relevant past experience and information and then use this ‘common knowledge’ as the foundation, the context, for the joint activity that follows. On this basis, Tony makes some suggestions of his own and the three speakers work with each other’s ideas. Information is shared, but more than that is achieved. Using the tool of language, the three people together transform the given information into new understanding. As a result of their combined intellectual efforts, they solve the problem.

Sequence 1.1 is an ordinary, everyday example of a very important human process. We all think collectively, and teamwork of this kind is vital for many kinds of activity. The first step to understanding how we do it is to recognize that language has this special function for collective thinking—otherwise we are liable to underestimate its psychological and social significance. In our everyday lives, of course, we take this function completely for granted. We know that there are obvious benefits to be gained from joint mental activity, and organize our lives accordingly. We say that ‘two heads are better than one’, meaning that the mental resources of two or more people working together can achieve more than the sum of their individual contributions. But perhaps because we do take it so much for granted, the role of joint mental activity in human creativity is also often played down in explaining human achievements. In most societies of the developed world it is customary to explain success in terms of individual talent rather than collective effort, and we commonly celebrate those achievements by awarding prizes and other marks of acclaim to individual artists, scientists, entertainers, and so on. Ye t few, if any, major achievements in the arts, sciences or industry have been made by isolated individuals. Almost always, significant achievement depends on communication between creative people. Impressionist art, the literature of the Brontës or the Lake poets, the structure of DNA, the microchip and the songs of the Beatles were all essentially the products of creative collectives. Creative explosions of literature, art, science and technology, which occur in particular places at particular times, represent more than coincidental collections of individual talent: they represent the building of communities of enquiry and practice which enable their members to achieve something greater than any of them ever could alone. Traditional and more conventional kinds of work have also depended, since time unreckoned, on the sharing and joint construction of knowledge amongst practitioners and on the induction of apprentices into the ways in which language is adapted to serve the needs of such communities of practice.

We use language to work successfully together; but of course we also know from everyday experience that joint activity does not necessarily lead to success. Two heads may be better sometimes, but we also say that ‘too many cooks spoil the broth’. That is, we find that people frequently misunderstand each other, and that joint activity can generate confusion, stifle individual creativity and achieve only mediocrity. Studying how we normally use language to think together may help us to understand how effective collaboration can be more reliably achieved.

The evolution of language and thinking

It is hard to imagine how human social life could exist without some kind of language. The emergence of language, some time long ago in the prehistory of our species, made possible the kind of social existence which we take for granted. It gave us a crucial evolutionary advantage over other animals, partly because it became possible for us to share useful information with a new clarity and explicitness, within and across generations. Through the evolution of language, we also became capable of thinking constructively and analytically together. Other relatively intelligent species (such as chimpanzees and dolphins) have never developed comparable ways of sharing their mental resources, with the result that each individual animal can only learn from others by observation, imitation and taking part in joint activity; and most of the knowledge each chimpanzee or dolphin accumulates over a lifetime is lost when they die. Language is a unique evolutionary invention. Some animals, like honey-bees, have reliable ways of sharing useful information, using sign systems which have been evolutionarily designed and genetically programmed for a single, focused purpose. But language is a completely different kind of communicative system, because it is flexible, innovative and adaptable to the demands of changing circumstances. It enables people to create, share and consider new ideas and to reflect together on their actions (for example, to evaluate their joint activities using concepts like ‘plans’, ‘intentions’, ‘honour’ and ‘debt’). Words mean what humans agree together to make them mean, new words can be created as required, and they can be combined to make an infinite variety of meanings. Language enables us to share thoughts about new experiences and organize life together in ways in which no other species can.

Explanations for why the evolutionary emergence of language was so important for the development of our species commonly focus on the use of language for sharing information accurately, so that it became possible for humans to learn from each other and co-ordinate their actions. For example, in his book The Language Instinct, the psycholinguist Steven Pinker writes: ‘Simply by making noises with our mouths, we can reliably cause precise new combinations of ideas to arise in each other’s minds.’¹ By emphasizing ‘precision’ in this way, however, there is a danger that the nature of language—its important differences from animal communication systems—and hence its real significance in human evolutionary development, will be misrepresented. Language has not been designed as a means for transmitting ideas in a precise, unchanged form from one individual brain to another. Of course humans use language to share and exchange information quite effectively, on the whole. Yet on a practical, everyday level, we all know that we do not reliably make people understand exactly what we mean. As Guy Browning, a journalist commentator on the world of work, points out:

A shoal of a million fish might not be able to write Romeo and Juliet between them, but they can change direction as one in the blink of an eye. Using language, a human team leader can give an instruction to a team of six and have it interpreted in six completely different ways.²

Misunderstandings regularly arise, despite our best efforts, because there is rarely one unambiguous meaning to be discovered in what someone puts into words. But variations in interpretation are not always ‘misunderstandings’. When we are dealing with complex, interesting presentations of ideas, variations in understanding are quite normal and sometimes are even welcomed: how otherwise could there be new interpretations of Shakespeare’s plays, and why else are we interested in them? I am sure that my understanding of Pinker’s book, despite the clarity of his writing, will not be exactly what he might have intended or expected, and I know that I will not make quite the same interpretation of it as other readers. I expect that many authors are frequently dismayed to discover that readers misunderstand their ‘message’; but they should not necessarily take this as failure on their part. The act of reading any text relies on the interpretative efforts of a reader, as well as on the communicative efforts and intentions of the author.

As a system for transmitting specific factual information without any distortion or ambiguity, the sign system of honey-bees would probably win easily over human language every time. However, language offers something more valuable than mere information exchange. Because the meanings of words are not invariable and because understanding always involves interpretation, the act of communicating is always a joint, creative endeavour. Words can carry meanings beyond those consciously intended by speakers or writers because listeners or readers bring their own perspectives to the language they encounter. Ideas expressed imprecisely may be more intellectually stimulating for listeners or readers than simple facts. The fact that language is not always reliable for causing precise meanings to be generated in someone else’s mind is a reflection of its powerful strength as a medium for creating new understanding. It is the inherent ambiguity and adaptability of language as a meaning-making system that makes the relationship between language and thinking so special.

We cannot, then, understand language use simply in terms of information transfer between individuals. Every time we talk with someone, we become involved in a collaborative endeavour in which meanings are negotiated and some common knowledge is mobilized. Joan, Mary and Tony in Sequence 1.1 can quickly get on with their problem-solving because they all know what a crossword puzzle is and how it is solved and they know that it is reasonable to take that shared knowledge for granted. Even a simple and brief encounter—someone requesting directions from someone else on the street—involves a certain tacit, negotiated agreement about what kind of event is taking place and how it is appropriate to behave. However, there is always the potential risk that a shared understanding and purpose may not be successfully negotiated. Different perspectives may not be reconciled (as in the joke about someone asking directions who is told ‘Well, if I was trying to get there I wouldn’t start from here’). But in almost every encounter we do not only gain and give information; the joint experience shapes what each participant thinks and says, in a dynamic, spiral process of mutually influenced change. We can see Joan, Mary and Tony doing this towards the end of the sequence as they explore the possible meanings of the word ‘material’. The product of a conversation is usually the achievement of some new, joint, common knowledge. Language is designed for doing something much more interesting than transmitting information accurately from one brain to another: it allows the mental resources of individuals to combine in a collective, communicative intelligence which enables people to make better sense of the world and to devise practical ways of dealing with it.

A great deal of research has now been done on how infants learn to speak. Observational studies of young children learning their first words have revealed that they do not simply copy the language they hear around them. Instead, they seem to have a very specific, powerful ability to use what they hear to work out how their native language works, despite the fact that a good deal of what they hear may be grammatically incomplete or incorrect. This remarkable ability enables most children to become creative language users with astonishing rapidity, producing sequences of words which they may never have heard spoken but which conform to basic rules of grammar. Many linguists, psychologists and biologists use this evidence to argue that language is not simply a means of communication invented by our intelligent ancestors, but is a biological product of natural selection. That is, they suggest that our capacity for learning and using language must be an innate, instinctive ability, ‘hard-wired’ into the human brain,³ and so have tried to determine whether the neurological organization of the brain reflects features common to all human languages—the so-called ‘language universals’. While these kinds of questions about human origins are profoundly intriguing, investigating the living relationships between language, society and individual is no less interesting and important for understanding the human mind. Our brains may indeed be designed for acquiring language, and language may mirror some neurological features of the brain; but, in order to become effective communicators, children have to learn a particular language and understand how it is used to ‘get things done’ in their home community. The human capacity for using language may well be a biological feature, but languages, and the ways in which people use them, vary and change considerably across and within societies, while human brains do not. Each living language is therefore a cultural creation which has emerged from the history of generations of a community of users. Unlike young honeybees, children will only learn how to use a native language—the local, specific version of the natural human communication system—by interacting with the people around them in the context of social events. As I will show in later chapters, culturally specific ways of using language are very important for the development of children’s interthinking capabilities.

Language and the joint creation of knowledge

For centuries, people have wondered whether our thoughts are shaped by the meanings and structures of language (the question of linguistic determinism) and if people who grow up speaking different languages come to think in different ways (the question of linguistic relativity). Research on linguistic relativity has usually involved some attempt to discover whether native speakers of one language conceptualize the world in different ways from speakers of another language, in ways that reflect differences in the grammar and vocabulary of the languages involved. The still-inconclusive results of years of research and debate about this issue continue to accumulate on library shelves the world over, and I do not intend to pursue it further here. Rather than asking ‘How, if at all, does acquiring a language influence the way an individual thinks?’, I want to address the question ‘How do we use language to make joint sense of experience?’

We are essentially social, communicative creatures who gain much of what we know from others and whose actions are shaped by our need to deal with the arguments, demands, requests, entreaties, threats and orders that others make to us and we make to them. At the practical level of everyday life, individual thinking and interpersonal communication have to be integrated. To make our ideas real for other people, we have to express them in words (or other kinds of symbolic representations, such as mathematical notation, diagrams and pictures). For our ideas to have any social impact, we must either act them out or communicate them to other people in ways which will influence the actions of those people. That is, we use language to transform individual thought into collective thought and action.

The word ‘knowledge’ is not only used to refer to the information held in an individual’s brain (as in ‘her knowledge of local history is phenomenal’); it is also used to refer to the sum of what is known to people, the shared resources available to a community or society (as in ‘all branches of knowledge’). Knowledge in this second, social, shared sense exists primarily in the form of spoken and written language (and the related system of mathematical notation). Even though science is about material things and physical relationships, and is represented in technologies and artefacts, it is shared through words and formulae. Almost all of what any biologist knows about evolutionary theory, for example, will not have come from observing material evidence but from communicating, through language, with other biologists. Ask a chemist to explain the Periodic Table and they will use names for the elements which were given to them by other chemists, and which reflect the history of chemistry as embodied in chemistry texts and journals. Astronomers and physicists know about ‘supernovas’; however, what they know is not just the result of looking through their telescopes but of reading and hearing how their colleagues have tried to explain the data at their disposal.

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Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Figures
• Preface
• 1: Language as a tool for thinking
• 2: Laying the foundations
• 3: The given and the new
• 4: Persuasion, control and argument
• 5: Communities
• 6: Development through dialogue
• 7: Conclusions
• Notes
• Bibliography