言意新辨

A New Interpretation of Thinking and Language

本文从"我们用语言思考吗"这个问题开始追问,围绕"语言决定论"和"思想语假说"这两种针锋相对的主张提出质疑。本文指出,"用什么思考"的意思不是"思考时心里浮现了什么",而是心智活动通过什么表达系统获得直接表达。思考以语言为归宿———在言说活动中,多种多样形式的心智活动通过一个单一形式的公共表达系统获得表达;这种表达是未成形东西的成形,而不是一种现成物转换成另一种现成物。本文借用交通系统来理解表达系统,进一步阐明以上论点。立足于以上基本思想,本文分别对"动物的语言","形象思维"、"内部语言"、翻译、"普通语言","找词儿"、"言不尽意"等多种题目展开讨论。言说活动一端连着言说者的种种经验,另一端连在语言上。语言不决定我们的思考;但说话的动物习惯以语言为归宿来思考,因此,语言参与塑造我们的思考。用英语、汉语、几何图形思考,思考会各有不同。本文更进一步说明,虽然字词语言是人类最主要的表达系统,这却并不意味着我们的经验都可以通过字词语言获得充分表达。

The article begins with a question-do we think in a language? Linguistic determinism and the hypothesis of language of thought〔mentalese〕offer squarely opposite answers to the question,but both theories are really problematic. The article points out that the question‘in what we think'should be appropriately understood to mean ‘in what communicative system do our mental activities find their direct expression'instead of‘what processes emerge in our mind when we think'. Henceforth,a Chinese does think in Chinese and a British in English. Speaking is an activity in which a variety of mental contents is expressed through a uniform and public system. An analogy between a communicative system and a traffic system is introduced to explicate the above ideas. To unfold this basic idea,the article goes on to discuss a series of themes such as animal language,figurative thinking,inner language,translation, the universal language,the phenomenon of looking for a word,and ineffability. Speaking connects various experiences of the speaker on the one end to a system of expression on the other end. Language does not determine what and how we think. Yet,since we as speaking animals are largely made to take language as the destination of our thinking,it does modify what and how we think. When we think in Chinese or in English or in mathematical language,we do think differently to an extent. The article also points out that although Wortsprache is indeed the primal communicative system for humans,all our experiences cannot find their full expressions in it.