The study of language in a biological setting

Dominant linguistics paradigms in the first half of the twentieth century had centered their attention on Saussurean “Langue,” a social object of which individual speakers have only a partial mastery. Ever since the 1950s, generative grammar shifted the focus of linguistic research onto the systems of linguistic knowledge possessed by individual speakers, and onto the “Language Faculty,” the species-specific capacity to master and use a natural language (Chomsky 1959). In this perspective, language is a natural object, a component of the human mind, physically represented in the brain and part of the biological endowment of the species. Within such guidelines, linguistics is part of individual psychology and of the cognitive sciences;its ultimate aim is to characterize a central component of human nature, defined in a biological setting.

The idea of focusing on the Language Faculty was not new; it had its roots in the classical rationalist perspective of studying language as a “mirror of the mind,” as a domain offering a privileged access to the study of human cognition. In order to stress such roots, Chomsky refers to the change of perspective in the 1950s as “the second cognitive revolution,” thus paying a tribute to the innovative ideas on language and mind in the philosophy of the seventeenth to early nineteenth centuries, with particular reference to the Cartesian tradition.

The roots of the Minimalist Program

ab&lr: To start from a personal note, let us take the Pisa Lectures as a point of departure. You have often characterized the approach that emerged from your Pisa seminars, twenty years ago, as a major change of direction in the history of our field. How would you characterize that shift today?

nc: Well, I don't think it was clear at once, but in retrospect there was a period, of maybe twenty years preceding that, in which there had been an attempt to come to terms with a kind of a paradox that emerged as soon as the first efforts were made to study the structure of language very seriously, with more or less rigorous rules, an effort to give a precise account for the infinite range of structures of language. The paradox was that in order to give an accurate descriptive account it seemed necessary to have a huge proliferation of rule systems of a great variety, different rules for different grammatical constructions. For instance, relative clauses look different from interrogative clauses and the VP in Hungarian is different from the NP and they are all different from English; so the system exploded in complexity. On the other hand, at the same time, for the first time really, an effort was made to deal with what has later come to be called the logical problem of language acquisition. Plainly, children acquiring this knowledge do not have that much data. In fact you can estimate the amount of data they have quite closely, and it's very limited;still, somehow children are reaching these states of knowledge which have apparently great complexity, and differentiation and diversity – and that can't be.

It would only be appropriate to begin with some of the thoughts of the master, who does not disappoint us, even though the topics I want to discuss are remote from his primary concerns. Galileo may have been the first to recognize clearly the significance of the core property of human language, and one of its most distinctive properties: the use of finite means to express an unlimited array of thoughts. In his Dialogo, he describes with wonder the discovery of a means to communicate one's “most secret thoughts to any other person … with no greater difficulty than the various collocations of twenty-four little characters upon a paper.” This is the greatest of all human inventions, he writes, comparable to the creations of a Michelangelo– of whom Galileo himself was a virtual reincarnation according to the mythology constructed by his student and biographer Viviani, memorialized in Kant's image of the reincarnation of Michelangelo in Newton through the intermediary of Galileo.

Galileo was referring to alphabetic writing, but the invention succeeds because it reflects the nature of the language that the little characters are used to represent. Shortly after his death, the philosopher-grammarians of Port Royal took that further step, referring to the “marvelous invention” of a means to construct “from 25 or 30 sounds that infinity of expressions, which bear no resemblance to what takes place in our minds, yet enable us to reveal [to others] everything that we think, and all the various movements of our soul.”

The term “secular priesthood” I am borrowing from the distinguished British philosopher and intellectual historian Isaiah Berlin. He was referring to Communist intellectuals who defended the state religion and the crimes of power. To be sure, not all Soviet intellectuals joined the secular priesthood. There were the commissars, who defended and administered power, and the dissidents, who challenged power and its crimes.

We honor the dissidents and condemn the commissars, rightly of course. Within the Soviet tyranny, however, quite the opposite was true – also of course.

The distinction between “commissars” and “dissidents” traces back to the earliest recorded history, as does the fact that, internally, the commissars are commonly respected and privileged, and the dissidents despised and often punished.

Consider the Old Testament. There is an obscure Hebrew word that is translated as “prophet” in English (and, similarly, other Western languages). It means something like “intellectual.” The prophets offered critical geopolitical analysis and moral critique and counsel. Many centuries later, they were honored; at the time, they were not exactly welcomed. There were also “intellectuals” who were honored: the flatterers at the courts of the kings. Centuries later, they were denounced as “false prophets.” The prophets were the dissidents, the false prophets the commissars.

There have been innumerable examples in the same era and since. That raises a useful question for us: Are our own societies an exception to the historical rule? I think not: they conform to the rule rather closely.

Invited by the University of Siena, Noam Chomsky spent the month of November 1999 at the Certosa di Pontignano, a fourteenth-century monastery and now a research facility of the University. It was an extraordinarily intense and exciting month, in which faculty and students of the University of Siena had a unique opportunity to come in close contact with different aspects of Chomsky's work, discuss science and politics with him, exchange and sharpen ideas and projects, and interact with him in many ways. The texts collected in this volume are related to activities that took place in connection with this visit.

The first chapter provides an introduction to some basic concepts of linguistic theory and to some elements of the history of the field which are crucial for understanding certain theoretical questions addressed in the following chapters.

The second chapter is related to a particular occasion. Chomsky's sojourn in Siena was organized twenty years after his visit to the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa, an event which, through the memorable Pisa Lectures, has profoundly influenced the field of theoretical linguistics ever since. In connection with this anniversary, Chomsky received, on October 27, 1999, the “Perfezionamento honoris causa,” the honorary degree delivered by the Scuola Normale Superiore. In that occasion, he gave the Galileo Lecture “Perspectives on Language and Mind,” which traces central ideas of current scientific linguistics and of the modern cognitive sciences to their roots in classical thought, starting with Galileo Galilei's famous praise of the “marvelous invention,”alphabetic writing, which allows us to communicate with other people, no matter how distant in space and time.

The right way to address the announced topic would be to review the fundamental principles of language and the brain and to show how they can be unified, perhaps on the model of chemistry and physics sixty-five years ago, or the integration of parts of biology within the complex a few years later. But that course I am not going to try to attempt. One of the few things I can say about this topic with any confidence is that I do not begin to know enough to approach it in the right way. With less confidence I suspect it may be fair to say that current understanding falls well short of laying the basis for the unification of the sciences of the brain and higher mental faculties, language among them, and that many surprises may lie along the way to what seems a distant goal – which would itself come as no surprise if the classical examples I mentioned are indeed a realistic model.

This somewhat skeptical assessment of current prospects differs from two prevalent but opposing views. The first holds that the skepticism is unwarranted, or more accurately, profoundly in error, because the question of unification does not even arise. It does not arise for psychology as the study of mind, because the topic does not fall within biology, a position taken to define the “computer model of mind”; nor for language, because language is an extra-human object, the standard view within major currents of philosophy of mind and language, and also put forth recently by prominent figures in neuro-science and ethology.

Everyone's affective posture actually emerges in his or her behavior. There is probably no better way to demonstrate this observation than to examine the affective posture of our three therapists – Rogers, Perls, and Ellis – all with the same client, performing the same tasks. Of course, we will also want to know something about the affective posture of the client. Surely her unique characteristics will call out specific reactions from each therapist. The Shostrom film of Perls, Ellis, and Rogers with Gloria, a client, though not intended to be examined for affective interactions, is actually quite perfect for this task. We can compare the behavior of the therapist with his goals in therapy – his philosophy or theory of therapy, if you will, as well as compare how each therapist gets along with this particular client.

In this chapter we try to bring Gloria as a client more to life in the written text both as a figure in her own right and as an integral part of our discussion of the affective postures of each therapist. Even though we continue to focus primarily on Rogers, Perls, and Ellis, and do not have enough material to do justice to Gloria as a whole person, the unique ways that she expressed her thoughts and emotions reveals a depth to hidden aspects of the emotion system that cannot be sensed except in the dynamic interaction of people.

Albert Ellis, unlike the other two men who are the focus of this volume, is still alive today. At the age of eighty-nine, he is a seasoned therapist who remains professionally active. During the 1960s, he was most well known as a sex educator who promulgated progressive views. Later on, he became renowned as the developer of Rational Emotive Therapy (RET), which can be considered the forerunner of cognitive-behavior therapy.

Ellis's influence in the field of clinical and counseling psychology has grown considerably over the years. Although many psychologists regard him as eccentric and at odds with more traditional clinical practice, the notoriety of his public persona does not seem to have tarnished the evaluation of his historical contribution. In 1982, no fewer than three journal articles accorded him special acknowledgment. The American Psychologist ranked him as the second most influential psychotherapist in the world at that time. The Journal of Counseling Psychology determined that he was the most frequently cited author in professional journals since 1957. The Journal of Marital and Family Therapy cited him as the fourth most influential theorist. Consistent with these important signals of recognition, in 1986 he received APA's Award for Distinguished Professional Contribution.

In his work at the Rational Emotive Institute, Ellis remains an extraordinarily active psychologist. A 1988 biography of him described a seventy-five-year-old Ellis putting in an eighty-five- to ninety-hour work week, daily from 9 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. Over his lifetime, he published dozens of books and hundreds of articles.

In this book we use concepts from emotions theory, dynamic systems theory, complementarity, and attachment theory to model the complex process of personality development and change. Like other accounts of complex systems from the time of Freud and Allport, through Skinner, Erikson, and Block, we use the individual as the unit of discovery and understanding. In the introductory chapter, we examine the thesis that affect is the central organizing force in individual personality and the integrative link between domains of psychological functioning. In doing so, we briefly present the historical context of research on emotion.

Even though the field of psychology has seen many recent and significant advances in emotions theory over the last two decades, much of the contemporary work on human development, clinical work, and personality development is still fragmented. In this book, we take advantage of the new understandings from emotion theory and research to forge a more integrated view of human development. Additionally, there are lessons to be learned from the hermeneutic, the postmodern, and dynamic systems approaches to knowledge that have arisen in recent times to challenge Cartesian methods of thought and analysis. Years ago, John Bowlby dared to integrate the seemingly disparate theoretical paradigms of psychoanalysis, ethology, and general systems theory in building a model of how and why humans form attachments. It has proven to be a richly generative theory that has grown beyond its own beginnings. Similarly, psychology might well profit from perspectives from today's newer epistemological and scientific models.

This lengthy quotation is a succinct and eloquent description of Rogers's approach to his therapeutic work in the middle of his career. It can be read as instruction to the eager beginning therapist. It can be read as an introduction to Rogers's theory for the interested general reader. But it also reveals the man himself and his stance in relation to his work. This last reading is the one we are interested in – the man himself. In particular, we concentrate on how he and his work develop over time as a function of his emotional and cognitive growth.

The fact that Rogers is specific about some emotions and general about others, even when he is not explicitly thinking about emotion, is important. Note that the beginning therapist specifically will be “surprised.”

In the next sections of the book we turn from the large sweep of life as it has been portrayed in the socioemotional analysis. Now we examine some smaller emotional behaviors, the habits of expression in writing and behavior. We show that these are much more than disconnected habits; they form meaningful bits of the structure of personality. They are like fractals – small versions of elements with similar forms making up a larger form. Some critical behaviors are like crystals in that they are made of elements that resemble each other and then form a larger structure. The larger form resembles the elements, and, psychologically, the resemblance may be both meaningful and symbolic. These small pieces of behavior are what the broader categories of attachment are composed from or result from. We have already been integrating the forms of specific emotions such as shame or anger into the portrayal of attachment styles, but now we will go in a different direction with the same intent.

It is in the small, significant bits of behavior that people such as Silvan Tomkins, a founder of emotional analysis, or Perls, founder of Gestalt therapy, erratically form their often surprising insights about the larger wholes. From subconscious uses of expressive emotional words to the larger patterns of intellectual organization, the tendency toward emotional wholeness of the person is always building, adapting to new circumstances, and then rebuilding on the old foundations.