Digitality, granularity and ineffability  

Oleh:

Liang, Ruiqing

Jenis: Article from Journal - ilmiah internasional
Dalam koleksi: Language Sciences (Full Text) vol. 33 no. 1 (2011), page 30-39.
Topik: Sensory experience Phenomenal ineffability Phenomenal effect Digitality Granularity Map theory of language
Fulltext: vol. 33 issue 1 January, 2011. p. 30-39.pdf (201.31KB)

Isi artikel

Digitality and granularity are two distinctive features of human language and both of them, as argued in this paper, contribute to ineffability, and the ineffability problem, not surprisingly, constitutes a serious challenge to what Harris [Harris, R. (ed.), 2002. The Language Myth in Western Culture. Curzon, Richmond] has called ‘‘the communication myth” in the Western culture. Based on a conceptual analysis of the notion of ineffability, the present paper argues that there is indeed a descriptive gap between language and experience, but sensory experience is only phenomenally ineffable in an attenuated sense, namely that the phenomenal content of sensory experience (e.g. the aroma of coffee), largely effable, cannot be conveyed in words only in an exhaustive sense. Furthermore, the strength of phenomenal ineffability is in direct proportion to that of dynamic phenomenal effect sensory experience exerts on the experiencing subject. This weak thesis of phenomenal ineffability is ultimately motivated by the map theory of language, which provides a unified explanation for what is said, what is unsaid, and what cannot be (exhaustively) said. Phenomenal ineffability is not something that should be avoided; instead, it helps to save us from a language that is too cumbersome for acquisition and communication.

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