98020500000 HERMENEUTICAL VIEW OF LANGUAGE AS MEDIUM FOR UNDERSTANDING REALITY

ALEXA, DANIELA

Language and Reality

Hermeneutical View Of Language As Medium For Understanding Reality

The aim of the following paper is twofold. First and foremost, it attempts to offer a
general but comprehensive overview of the relation of language and human thought, and the
gross impact and influence, language has on our cultural and historical determination, as well
as to delineate several pathological characteristics of our main method of communication.
And second, the article focuses on the phenomenon of sedimentation of language in history
and the transient nature of the verbal medium.
The paper opens with a general understanding of the hermeneutical view of the relation
between word and reason. It then follows with a thorough examination of public versus
private language and subsequently explores the hermeneutical concepts of understanding,
interpreting and their implication in the scheme of historical and cultural consciousness and
hermeneutical experience. This leads to the presentation of Lakoff and Johnson’s account,
which elaborates on the impact that metaphors have on us and our perception, and creates a
link to a retort from my part regarding the phenomenon of sedimentation of language.

Language and Reason

To truly understand the multi-faceted structure of our language, its role in human
perception of the world and the concepts with which it is described and analyzed, we must
question first the relation between language and thought, and whether one is possible without
the other.
Hermeneutic tradition assigns language an ultimately dominant role in the operation and
organization of thought. The original hermeneutic formulation of the conception of mind
portrays the power of human rationality as a natural, integrated set of “forces”, in which
intelligence, reason, consciousness, imagination, sensitivity and emotion form an organic
whole, a system. This explanation stems from understanding man’s necessity of confrontation
with nature, interaction with the environment, and management of its multiple influences and
stimuli. Man’s sphere of action is not unique and uniform, in such a sense, but distributed. To
grasp the manifold that surrounds him, man must give unity to the impressions he has from
reality. This representation of the world must impose unity upon multiplicity. This process,

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however, is not a mental state, but rather an operation, a “force”, an action, as Kant claims.
This operation of thought is a synthesis of the many sub-impressions that compose the one
unite representation in man’s mind. Thus, this view of thought as a representation leads to
formulating thought as an operation of assembly, of integrative organization of the
multiplicity of the world into universals.
There is no thought, if there is no action occurring of creating universal forms, general
concepts of the world, as early hermeneutic tradition through Humbolt confirms. It is at this
point that language intervenes. Its role is to transform what is given as material, individual,
accidental into something ideal, universal and necessary.
The synthesis is possible only with the introduction of language. Language serves as a
medium here in organizing the multiplicity of man’s environment in categories, in conceptual
framed classes which aid him in distinguishing the objects of the world, formulating,
therefore, expressing in his mind the universal and the general in its forms. This formulation
of universals comes to be only as a result of the interference of language as a medium
between reality and man’s mind. One must consider, in fact, universality as a feature of
language specifically, and not something that can be found in the world, as Abelard famously
writes “(...) things taken neither singly nor collectively can be called ‘universals’ insofar as
predicated of several, it remains to ascribe this kind of universality to words” (§63).
Thus, only language confers human beings the title of truly reasoning subjects. The active
pursuit of reflection and introspection made its entrance only with the appearance in the mind
of man of a conceptual foundation, of universal forms, based on language.

Language as a Public Social Practice

The universals present in language are possible however only within public linguistic
practices. This priority of public language is necessary in order for one to truly distinguish
concepts and acquire reliable universal ideas.
It is important to underline that comparison of the world, necessary in order for one not to
fall victim to the arbitrariness and illusion of one’s mind, must take place, therefore, in the
reciprocity of dialogue, in the intersubjective exchange. This allows men to proceed together
with the erection of a shared objective and meaning, in order to anticipate the future and
prosper in it and escape the present to which non-rational animals have been limited.

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Speaking a language, therefore, is nothing but learning to limit the pleasure of inventing
“private” language games in order to harmonize with the reality of the rules enforced in one’s
linguistic community.
There is an unexpected affinity regarding this necessity of public language between the
positions expressed by Hans-Georg Gadamer in Truth and Method and Man and Language
and the considerations about linguistic games that we find in the Philosophical Investigations
of Ludwig Wittgenstein, in which he provides explanation for the impossibility of a private
solipsistic language, whose terms are applied to the experiences of only one person.
According to the latter philosopher, language always presupposes a common world, since
it involves a normative application of concepts, based on which one can apply the term
correctly or incorrectly. There is a significant difference between the way that a term should
be applied and the way that the term is in fact applied, and while public language allows such
distinction, since the rules regarding the uses of words are rigidly set, a private language
would not be able to assure this application of terms, given that whenever the term will seem
to be applied correctly to the solipsist, it will be considered correct. Such a private practice
would make it impossible to make the connection between terms of a language and reality
itself.
Gadamer seems to take a similar stance regarding language. For communication, and
therefore a reality and a public language for one to participate in, to be possible, the creative
productivity of imagination of the individual speaker must be significantly limited indeed, in
order for both interlocutors to come to an understanding. Language thus, on one hand, limits
the free production of meanings, while on the other hand, by linking men together through
the use of its rules, allows social participation in its set of shared games. According to all
hermeneutical tradition, language has a cognitive function, as much as a communicative one.
Every product of language (utterance, sentence, discourse, dialogue, etc.) must be understood
and interpreted. This requires communication, dialogue, verbal exchange, and collaboration.
The assignment of meaning to a linguistic form, of understanding through the process of
continuous attempts of interpretation, is not a personal matter.
It is through dialogue, conversation, texts, that personal syntheses of one’s thought are
compared, adjusted, and finally exchanged. In this sense, the subjective relation of language
and thought depends on the collaboration of the subject with the other interlocutors (even if

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these may be texts, for language, as Gadamer shows, does not manifest itself merely in
speaking) or, on the recognition and understanding of the alienness of the counterpart.

Understanding and Interpretation

Understanding is the fundamental condition for the possibility of all human experience
and inquiry. All understanding ultimately takes place in language. Language is taken as a
primary lens through which human beings perceive the world, detect reality and judge based
upon the verbal framework available to them. And indeed that framework, depending on the
language itself even, can affect the judgment, cultural and historical perception, as well as
simple interactions with the world. It is such that we see and understand what surrounds us
based on our specific respective linguistic framework. Our culture, tradition and whole view
of reality is based on their interaction and relationship with our own concepts and
preconceptions. Gadamer makes use of the hermeneutical experience to provide a foundation
for this precise point. Our way of understanding history, culture, tradition, texts left to us is
all filtered through our own linguistic preconceptions.
And it is this stance that Gadamer abides by in his work Truth and Method. Language is
the ultimate and decisive hermeneutic experience, in which the dialogic and linguistic nature
of all our understanding takes shape. We, according to Gadamer, do not possess language: it
is the language that possesses us, in such a way that the relationship with things, other men,
ourselves is marked by an unsurpassable linguistic interaction: “the being that can be
understood is language”. Language determines and makes our relationship with being, with
reality possible. However, it is significant not to run in the mistake of evaluating this intricate
relationship as a relationship between a subject (someone who knows) and object (the
known). The same linguistic experience, in fact, shows how little man is a subject of the
discourse and how much, instead, he lives in language. In fact, man was not always even
fully conscious of the existence of language as we conceive it at present. The Ancient Greeks
assumed and took language for granted, there seemed to be an air of complete
unconsciousness, as Gadamer rightly mentions in Man and Language, regarding the
existence of language as we perceive it now. The concept “language” is a relatively recent
development in our history.

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The reason behind this lack of consciousness in regards to language can be found in that
same tight, indivisible connection that language and thought share. Reason and word form a
united, mutually-supporting bond. “We can only think in a language,” writes the philosopher.
This indissoluble unity of thought and language takes the form of the unity of understanding
and interpretation, in the hermeneutical phenomenon. Understanding is truly possible only
through a conceptual interpretation of the subject matter.
“The interpreter does not know that he is bringing himself and his own concepts into the
interpretation. The verbal formulation is so much part of the interpreter's mind that he never
becomes aware of it as an object.”
These concepts are constantly being formed in this process of interpretation, since “…
understanding always includes an element of application and thus produces an ongoing
process of concept formation.” “The interpreter does not use words and concepts like a
craftsman who picks up his tools and then puts them away. Rather, we must recognize that all
understanding is interwoven with concepts and reject any theory that does not accept the
intimate unity of word and subject matter.”
Language, therefore, as the inferential framework of understanding becomes the place of
constant mediation between us and the world, between us and others and even between us
and ourselves. The reason behind it, according to Gadamer, is the fact that language has an
intrinsically ontological value. It transcends the mere dimension of what is affirmed since it
encloses truth in itself. Precisely for this reason, the search for truth cannot be a monologue,
that is, it can never be closed in itself, but must always remain open as a “dialogue”, because
truth (which cannot be the fruit of our inventions) is never complete or rigid, since it passes
through our own linguistic lens once it is grasped. Luigi Pareyson in Truth and Interpretation
makes an analogous suggestion: “truth is inseparable from personal interpretation” because
“we can not abandon our own point of view such that we could grasp it in a state of
presumed independence in such a way that it would be worth establishing a criterion
according to which we could measure our formulation of truth from an external perspective”.
We are, indeed, entirely enclosed in the linguistic world we live in. Gadamer is right to
mention: “We are always already biased in our thinking and knowing by our linguistic
interpretation of the world. To grow into this linguistic interpretation means to grow up in the
world. To this extent, language is the real mark of our finitude.”

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The nature of understanding consists of integrating what is unfamiliar to one, the

alienness of what one confronts himself with into his own familiar context, in such a way that
when one truly grasps the meaning, understanding something, he fuses his own view with the
view of the subject matter, such that in this encounter he transforms through a broadening of
mind. This understanding is based on a conceptual interpretation of the alien view through
one’s own inferential linguistic view of the world. That is the concept of fusion of horizons
which defines the hermeneutical experience.
The meaning of hermeneutics does not support, however, in the wake of Nietzsche’s “It is
precisely facts that do not exist, only interpretations.” position with which it is erroneously
associated, the thesis that reality is reduced to its interpretations and that, since the
interpretation is essentially linguistic, reality (the being) is reduced to language. The reason
for it according to Gadamer, is the fact that understanding (and, therefore, language as well)
does not equal to being itself, but rather it take the role of the framework upon which man
bases its view of being, and therefore of the world.
In fact, Gadamer highlights this assumption which regards hermeneutics as a relativistic
position and categorizes aesthetic experience, historical understanding, and linguistic
belonging as carriers of a subjective and inadequate vision of truth, as simply fallacious. This
criticism is erroneous because of the image of truth from which it attacks hermeneutics. It is
an image of truth built starting from the modern distinction between subject and object,
understood as distinct sides of the cognitive process, according to which the subject can know
objectively. However, in a hermeneutical key, truth must be regarded as a revelation,
manifestation of the world, of which one is part of and participates in. One should consider
hermeneutics as a position of critical realism, according to which personal involvement
becomes essential for men to truly understand reality and its objects. Men cannot construct
the world surrounding them, rather it is the world which discloses and reveals itself to them
and they perceive it through their linguistic medium.

Sedimentation of Meanings and Metaphors

Language cannot be subtracted from the movement of becoming, of continuous change
that our world seems to be subjected to. It is ultimately heavily influenced by history and
culture and therefore is subject to modifications and transformations. With every attempt of

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communication and conversation, language not only preserves the semantic horizon of the
past but also modifies it in such a way as to respond to the needs of the present. Belonging to
a linguistic community, according to Gadamer, confers one the potential to reshape the parts
of one’s language, to produce new paradigmatic applications able to renew the rules of the
usual linguistic games, and thus resulting in new metaphors and connotations. Not only men
live within their linguistic medium, but the language men live within is also the context in
which change of its identity inherited from tradition occurs. This change and transformation
of meanings occurs over time and transforms language, regaling upon it new angles and ways
of understanding.
Lakoff and Johnson deliver a thorough examination in their work Metaphors we live by
specifically on the essence of metaphors, of connotations that seem to accompany the words
of a language; their relation to language, thought and action; their application to reality and
most significantly the consequences which these involve. The authors accurately observe the
essentially metaphoric nature of our common conceptual system. Indeed a single
metaphorical concept or word with underlying connotation may drastically change our
perception of the world and interaction within it when dealing with matters concerning said
concept. To consider only, as it is suggested in the work, the example of the word ‘argument’
and the connotation it implies of ‘war’, we may stumble upon a myriad of ways in which it
conditions our perception and use. These metaphors don’t have their bases in language
intrinsically as a medium but vary based specifically upon variations in cultures, languages,
and point in history.
This demonstrates that not only do men edify the structure of language based on their
experience, but it also greatly affects them in perceiving reality, in a sort of action-reaction
chain of impressions. A sort of sedimentation of meanings and connotations occurs with the
evolution of a language, in which layers upon layers of meanings are regaled upon words, in
such a way to cause the language to evolve as if having a will of its own into a continuous
flow, making it part of the “becoming”. Language, thus cannot be rigid, it retains flexibility
and evolves, taking different shapes and forms previously meaningless to us. It insidiously
immerses itself into vagueness and ambiguity at times, acquiring new, never seen before
intentions and connotations. With time, in fact, it attributes more and more meanings, creates
links among certain words and ultimately leads to a complete distortion almost of the

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genuine, original intent of the words. These words, the metaphors implied and the
connotations behind them, are what ultimately lead to changing even our view and perception
of the external world.

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References and bibliography

1. Gadamer, H. PART III: The ontological shift of hermeneutics


guided by language, Truth and Method (1975). London/New York, Continuum Publishing
Group, p. 383-484.
2. Gadamer, H. Man and Language (1966). University of California Press, 1976
3. Gadamer, H. Language and Understanding (1970).
4. Lakoff & Johnson. Metaphors we live by (2003). University of Chicago Press.
5. Pareyson, L. Truth and Interpretation (1971). SUNY Press. p. 25.
6. Spade, P.V. Five Texts on the Mediaeval Problem of Universals: Porphyry, Boethius,
Abelard, Duns Scotus, Ockham (1994). Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing
House.
7. Wittgenstein, L. Philosophical Investigations[Philosophische Untersuchungen] (1953),
translated by G. E. M. Anscombe. Oxford: Blackwell.

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