Ed McDonald On There Being 'No Such Things As Words, Sounds Or Meanings'

Edward McDonald replied to David Kellogg on sys-func on 13 Dec 2022 at 10:50:

I would go even further than either you or Chris and say simply this: there are NO such things as "words" - or "sounds" or "meanings" for that matter. We're misled by the lexicogrammar of our metalanguage into seeing such things are "entities", whereas, as Chris in effect pointed out, they're really "intersections" of a whole array of overlapping features. This is how I've framed the issue for my editing clients:

There are no such things as “meanings”, only *contrasts* in meaning; there are no such things as “words”, only alternative *choices* of wording. This is the hard truth about using a language that fluent users know "instinctively” but many learners - and teachers! - seem to try and avoid: you can’t know what a word means unless you know the other possible alternative choices in that context. And because each contrast in meaning, through the appropriate choice in wording, derives from and leads on to further choices, the process of writing, like that of reading, is one of negotiating future choices in the light of past ones, the key at every point being to anticipate what your reader will be expecting.

Such a relational point of view is very hard to keep in mind - so much of modern linguistics and philosophy of language rejects it outright - but if we look at how language actually functions - text in context - then for me it's the only perspective that makes sense.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, from the perspective of SFL Theory, 'things' are construals of experience as meaning. 'Sounds' are construals as first-order (material) things, whereas 'words' and 'meanings' are construals as second-order (semiotic) things; that is: as meta-things. Semiotic things have no material existence.

[2] To be clear, the distinction here between "misled" (words, sounds and meanings) and "really" (intersections of overlapping features) is a theoretical distinction between a Token and a Value:

McDonald's view is that the higher level of abstraction (Value) of the identity is real, whereas the lower level abstraction (Token) is not real. Logically, McDonald's argument is:

P = Q 

∴ ~ P

[3] To be clear, 'contrasts in meaning' presupposes that there are meanings that can be contrasted.

[4] To be clear, 'choices in wording' presupposes that there are words that can be chosen.

[5] To be clear, 'what a word means' presupposes that there are words that mean.

[6] To be clear, the relational point of view that McDonald meant to express is Saussure's view that 

concepts... are defined not positively, in terms of their content, but negatively by contrast with other items in the same system. What characterises each most exactly is being whatever the others are not (Saussure 1983, 115; Saussure 1974, 117).

In other words:

But, as above, it can be seen that the nub of McDonald's misinterpretation of Saussure is to treat the Value (contrast) as 'real' and to dismiss the Token (meaning) as 'no such thing'.

See also The Thoughts Of Spinoza In Systemic Functional Linguistics.