LOGICAL AND EMOTIVE FACTORS IN MEANTNG
Sont trop imperceptibles et trop nombreuses... On est oblige, par exemple, de
designer sous le nom gineral d'amour et de haine, mille amours et mille haines toutes
diffcrentes; il en est de meme de nos douleurs et de nos plaisirs. Byron too complains about
the ineffectiveness of our
words:
Oh that my words were colours! but their tints
May serve perhaps as outlines or slight hints.
In our own day, Wittgenstein has spoken of concepts with, blurred edges'.and has
compared them to indistinct photographs, adding: Is it even always an advantage to replace
an indistinct picture by a sharp one? Isn't the indistinct one often exactly what we need.
Some modern schools of poetry would wholeheartedly agrcee with Wittgenstein, and
would value the suggestive and evocative power of words far higher than any logical
precision. This was a basic principle of the Symbolist movemenr and was developed in
Verlaine's farnous poemr. Art poetique:
Il faut aussi que tu n'ailles point
Choisir tes mots sans quelque meprise:
Rien de plus cher gue la chanson grise
Ou I'Inddcis au Precis se joint.
Gide notes in his autobiography that in his early days, when he was under tlre
influence of Symbolism, he was fond of words like incertain, infni and indicible, which
give free scope to the imagination. such words abound in German, and they endowed it, in
the eyes of the young writer,
The generic nature of our words has often been described as an element of
'abstracness' in language. There is some danger of ambiguity here since the usual
opposition between absract and concrete does not correspond to that berween generic and
particular. A word may be extremely general in meaning and yet remain on the concrete
plane; thus, the terms animal and plant are the widest in range in the whole system of
zoological and botanical classification, and yet they ara concrete in the sense that specific
animals and plants are tangible, material things as opposed to pure abstractions such as
liberty or immortality. In a wider sense, however, generic terrns can be regarded as
'abstract', i.e. more schematic, poorer in distinguishing marks than particular terms; as the
logician would say, they have greater extension and lesser intension: they apply to a wider
range of irems but tell us less about them. The word tree, for example, is more general and
therefore more 'abstract' than, beech; in the same way, plant is more abstract than tree - in
fact it is such a wide and general concept that it did not exist in Classical Latin and only
emerged in the course of the Middle Ages: the Latin word planta meant 'sprout, slip,
cutting', not 'plant.
Each environment creates its own particular needs and problem; for the inhabitants
of the arctic region snow is a factor of such overriding importance that every state and
aspect of it has to be carefully specified. Sirnilarly the Paiute indians, who live in a derest
area, ‘spaek a language which permits the most detailed description of topographical
features, a necessity in a country where complex direction may be required for the location
of water holes. Language is, in the words of Sapir, ‘a complex inventory of the ideas,
interest, and occupation that take up the attention of the community. This problem will
came up again in the last chapter as it has a direct bearing on the structure of the
vocabulary.
Even berween language based on the same civilizadon there can be marked
differences in the use of general and specific terms. French is usually regarded as a pre-
eminently 'abstract’ languagera whereas German and even English are ’concrete’ in
comparison. There are various symptoms of this abstract streak in French. In some cases, a
single generic term in French -supplemented, if need be, by the context- will correspond to
there or four particular expressions in German. The latter language will speciry, for
e'xample, the various forms of locomotion which are all lumped together in French in the
generic ,term aller ‘to go': gehen 'to go, to walk’, reiten ‘to ride on horseback’, fahren ‘ to
drive, to travel by train or car, etc. It is of course possible to indicate the means of
locomotion in French by adding a supplementary phrase to the verb (aller a pied ‘on foot’, a
cheval ‘on horseback’, ect.) but this will be done only when necessary, whereas the more
differentiated German terms will automatically convey this extra information. Consider
also the following groups of words in English, German and French:
to sit sitzen
to stand(intransitive) stehen etre, se trouver ‘tobe’
to lie liegen
The voque of the so-called style substantif’ in modern French prose is
symptomatic of the same tendency. Thus the sentence: 'Ils cederent parce qu’on leur promit
fromellement qu’ils ne seraient pas punis’ (They gave in because they are formally
promised that they would not be punished) is considered less elegant than the more concise
and abstract ‘Ils cederent a une promesse formelle d’impunite’ (They yielled to a formal
promise of impinity). In recent years, some misgivings have been expressed about the
spread of these nominal construction, but the tendency itseft is deeply rooted in the
structure or the language.
All these features, to which other cuold be added, make modern French into a
highly abstract, intelectual, discreet and allusive instrument. They also mean rhat the
individual French word is in many cases more schematic, less rich in expressive details
than its German counterpart. English is in this respect mlch closer to German dran to
French, though it does not go so far as the former in the accumulation of details. The
abstract and generic character of the Frendr vocabulary increases the inportence of context
in that language: a vague, undifferentiated word like eller, mettre or etre obviously has less
autonomy and a more dependent on the context than a more particularized term. The same
lack of autonomy is, as we have seen, characteristic of the Franch work as a phonetic unit.
In Franch, the word is more submerged in the sentence and its component sounds
are functionally less apparent than in English. The detail is subservievt to the ensemble as
in classical building. This supremacy of the general over the particular, this more complete
dominance of the physical by the intellectual is just as evident in word formation and
phraseology.
Half a century later La Bruyere tried, in rather a different mood, to distinguish
between three other key-terms of the period: an able man ('habile homme'), a gentleman
(honnete homme'), and a good man ('homme de bien'). His analysis is expressed in quasi-
mathematical terms. The gentleman, he says, stands somewhere between the other two
types, bur is nearer to the able man than to the good man; indeed, he added with a touch of
cynicism, the distance between a gentleman and an able man is shrinking every day and is
about to vanish altogether. He then goes on to eramine, in tersely ironical terms, the
distinctive features of the three human types, and points out that while every good man is
by definition a gentleman, the reverse is obviously not true. These exercises in definition
and analysis have played a signficant part in the tradition of linguistic discipline which is
still one of the pillars of the French educational system.
Yet another source of vagueness in words is lack of familiarity with the things they
stand for. This is of course a highly variable factor, dependent o.t th" general knowledge
and the special interest of each individual. Many townspeople will have extremely hazy
notions about the meaning of animal and plant names or agricultural terms which will be
perfectly clear to any gardener or farmer. How many readers for example, will be able to
visualize some of. the plants mentioned by Ophelia: 'There's fannel for you, and
colambines. There's rue for you; and here's some for me. On quite a different plane, how
many people would be able to give a reasonably clear account of what is meant by
existentialism, logical positivism, surrealism, relativity, enzyme, electron, or cybernetics.
Yet these words, and many others like them are key-terms in twentieth-century
civilization, and some at least are apt to be used, in non-technical writings and even in the
press or over the wireless, withuot any explanation.
