Integrational Linguistics - Integrationism and Language

Integrationism and Language

While the integrationist views of Harris and Pablé, among others, differ from those who believe that cognition is distributed (i.e. Kravchenko and Love), the view on language between the two fields are quite similar. Both sides criticize the traditional view of linguistics which holds language as an individual internal psychological concern and takes written language as the base from which to begin analysis. Instead, integrationists view knowledge (which includes language) as “(i) linked to an individual’s experience, and therefore dependent on the ‘evidence available’ to that particular individual, but at the same time (ii) unpredictable because any integrational task involving sign-making and sign-interpreting is carried out in actual, time-embedded situations, which are not simply ‘given’, either.”. In other words, language usage is intrinsically, and without fail, contextual in all of its uses. Furthermore, Pablé, Haas & Christe question whether language is even amenable to scientific description, based upon its contextual nature. The contextual nature of language leads to a rejection of the notion that language is a ‘fixed code’. Harris discusses this extensively:

"When we come across words we do not know, words which apparently did not exist a few years ago, it is difficult to resist two conclusions. One is that if there are verbal ‘codes’, they cannot be fixed: on the contrary, they must be changing all the time. The other conclusion is that if there are such codes, different people use different ones, and these too change. Until yesterday, mine did not include the word moshpit: today it it does. But if the code has the kind of instability evidenced by the sudden emergence of new words and meanings, what guarantee of stability is there for ‘old’ words and meanings? The integrationist sees none. And if indeed there is none, then it is the viability of the concept of the code that is itself called in question. For it conspicuously fails to fulfill the theoretical function that is required of a code in semantics; namely to provide a source for those publicly invariant meanings that supposedly underpin verbal communication in the community, and can consequently be both ‘encoded’ and ‘decoded’ by those who know the code.”

Instead of parts of a fixed code, language is looked at as a resource to conduct action with, an idea that echoes the notions put forth by speech act theorists such as Austin and Searle, interactional sociolinguists such as Gumperz, conversation analysts such as Sacks, Schegloff, and Goodwin, as well as others such as Goffman, all of whom were or are active in fields outside of linguistics, including language philosophy, sociology, and anthropology. Harris claims that to not know what a word means is to not know what to do with the words, to not know “how to integrate the occurrence of the word into enough of our linguistic experience to satisfy the requirement of the case” (cited by Pablé). Pablé explores the integrationist views of language in terms of the naming practices related to castles in Bellinzona, Switzerland. By asking locals the directions to castles using non-standard names for the castles, Pablé elicited various forms by which the locals referred to them, highlighting the idea that references to the places were “highly context sensitive” and that the “meaning” is created on the spot, and that “speakers always make sense of language in light of their own experience”.