The Relation Between The Code And The Culture That Creates It

Halliday (1994: xxxi):

Whorf's Cryptotypes

 Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 569):

It is only in more recent times that the more covert areas of grammar have been systematically studied — those that, following Whorf, we have referred to as "cryptogrammar". Whorf (1956) distinguished between overt and covert categories and pointed out that covert categories were often also "cryptotypes" — categories whose meanings were complex and difficult to access. Many aspects of clause grammar, and of the grammar of clause complexes, are essentially cryptotypic. It is the analysis of some of these more covert features embodied in the everyday grammar, in particular the theory of mental processes, that throws light on the domain of cognitive science.

Models At Different Levels Of Awareness

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 568):

There is thus a range of variation from our everyday folk models to scientific models, with expert models somewhere coming in between (Linde, 1987). Such models vary considerably in the degree to which we are consciously aware of them as models (cf. Whorf s, 1956, notion of critical consciousness). We are more aware of models that 'stand out' as belonging a particular subculture than of those that are pan of our everyday repertoire; and we are more aware of scientific models than of folk models. 

Whatever the scope and sophistication of a model, however, we are likely to be more aware of a model as a cultural construct than as a linguistic construct, since language is typically further from our conscious attention.

Whorf's Critique Of The View That Language Distorts The Picture Of Reality

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 445):

After characterising the position of 'natural logic' in this way, Whorf (op cit.: 211) goes on to identify two problems with it:

Natural logic contains two fallacies: First, it does not see that the phenomena of a language are to its own speakers largely of a background character and so are outside the critical consciousness and control of the speaker who is expounding natural logic. Hence, when anyone, as a natural logician, is talking about reason, logic, and the laws of correct thinking, he is apt to be simply marching in step with purely grammatical facts that have somewhat of a background character in his own language or family of languages but are by no means universal in all languages and in no sense a common substratum of reason.

Second, natural logic confuses agreement about subject matter, attained through use of language, with knowledge of the linguistic processes by which agreement is attained: i.e., with the province of the despised (and to its notion superfluous) grammarian.

Whorf's Exposition Of The View That Language Distorts The Picture Of Reality

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 444-5):

The view that language distorts the picture of reality, and that there is a mismatch between language and thought … was discussed many years ago by Whorf, in terms which are still relevant today; Whorf refers to it as the "natural logic" view:

According to natural logic, the fact that every person has talked fluently since infancy makes every man his own authority on the process by which he formulates and communicates. He has merely to consult a common substratum of logic or reason which he and everyone else are supposed to possess. Natural logic says that talking is merely an incidental process concerned with communication, not with formulation of ideas. Talking, or the use of language, is supposed only to "express" what is essentially already formulated nonlinguistically. Formulation is an independent process, called thought or thinking, and is supposed to be largely indifferent to the nature of particular languages. Languages have grammars, which are assumed to be merely norms of conventional and social correctness, but the use of language is supposed to be guided not so much by them as by correct, rational, or intelligent THINKING.

Thought, in this view, does not depend on grammar but on laws of logic or reason which are supposed to be the same for all observers of the universe — to represent a rationale in the universe that can be "found" independently by all intelligent observers, whether they speak Chinese or Choctaw. In our own culture, the formulations of mathematics and of formal logic have acquired the reputation of dealing with this order of things: i.e., with the realm and laws of pure thought. Natural logic holds that different languages are essentially parallel methods for expressing this one-and-the-same rationale of thought and, hence, differ really in but minor ways which may seem important only because they are seen at close range. It holds that mathematics, symbolic logic, philosophy, and so on are systems contrasted with language which deal directly with this realm of thought, not that they are themselves specialised extensions of language. (Whorf, 1956: 207-8)

The Constructivist View Of Reality In SFL Theory

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 423-4):

We also have emphasised that reality is not something that is given to us; we have to construct an interpretation of it — or, as we prefer to put it, we have to construe our experience. Interpretation is a semiotic process, and our interpretation takes into account not only the concrete natural world but also the socio-cultural realm that is brought into existence as a semiotic construct (see Hasan, 1984a, for discussion, with reference to Whorf).

Blogger Comments:

Strictly speaking, in this view, 'reality' is the interpretation, not what is interpreted, and the 'concrete natural world' is also a semiotic construct: a construal of experience as meaning: perceptual and linguistic.

Reddy's Conduit Metaphor

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 272-3):

It is many years now since Whorf first drew attention to some of the prevailing metaphors in what he referred to as "Standard Average European" languages: such things as the way cognitive processes are typically construed in terms of concrete actions and movements in physical space: e.g. grasp, follow = 'understand', the line or direction of an argument, and so on. In a well-known paper, Reddy (1979) explored this particular domain in greater depth and showed how in English the entire semantic field of saying and sensing is permeated by what he called the "conduit metaphor", according to which meaning is "contained" in thoughts or words and may be "conveyed" along some "channel" from a speaker to a listener.

Whorf On Lexical Metaphor In Standard Average European

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 233-4):

More than half a century ago, Whorf (1956. 145-6) provided a revealing account of the metaphorical construction of the domains of duration, intensity, and tendency in English and other standard languages of Europe:

To fit discourse to manifold actual situations, all languages need to express durations, intensities, and tendencies. It is characteristic of Standard Average European and perhaps many other language types to express them metaphorically. The metaphors are those of spatial extension, i.e. of size, number (plurality), position, shape, and motion. We express duration by 'long, short, great, much, quick, slow,' etc.; intensity by 'large, great, much, heavy, light, high, low, sharp, faint' etc.; tendency by 'more, increase, grow, turn, get, approach, go, come, rise, fall, stop, smooth, even, rapid, slow'; and so on through an almost inexhaustible list of metaphors that we hardly recognise as such, since they are virtually the only linguistic media available. The nonmetaphorical terms in this field, like 'early, late, soon, lasting, intense, very, tending', are a mere handful quite inadequate to the needs.

It is quite clear how this condition "fits in". It is part of our whole scheme of OBJECTIFYING — imaginatively spatialising qualities and potentials that are quite nonspatial (so far as any spatially perceptive senses can tell us). Noun-meaning (with us) proceeds from physical bodies to referents of far other sorts. Since physical bodies and their outlines in PERCEIVED SPACE are denoted by size and shape terms and reckoned by cardinal numbers and plurals, these patterns of denotation and reckoning extend to the symbols of nonspatial meanings, and so suggest an IMAGINARY SPACE. Physical shapes 'move, stop, rise, sink, approach,' etc. in perceived space; why not these other referents in their imaginary space? This has gone so far that we can hardly refer to the simplest nonspatial situation without constant resort to physical metaphors. I "grasp" the "thread" of another's arguments, but if its "level" is "over my head" my attention may "wander" and "lose touch" with the "drift" of it, so that when he "comes" to his "point" we differ "widely," our "views" being indeed so "far apart" that the "things" he says "appear" "much" too arbitrary, or even "a lot" of nonsense!

Overt Categories (Phenotypes) vs Covert Categories (Cryptotypes)

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 26-7):

The understanding of covert categories in the grammar is due to Whorf (1956: 88 ff), who made the distinction between overt categories or phenotypes and covert categories or cryptotypes; he is worth quoting at some length:

An overt category is a category having a formal mark which is present (with only infrequent exceptions) in every sentence containing a member of the category. The mark need not be part of the same word to which the category may be said to be attached in a paradigmatic sense; i.e. it need not be a suffix, prefix, vowel change, or other 'inflection', but may be a detached word or a certain patterning of the whole sentence. ...

A covert category is marked, whether morphemically or by sentence pattern, only in certain types of sentence and not in every sentence in which a word or element belonging to the category occurs. The class membership of the word is not apparent until there is a question of using it or referring to it in one of these special types of sentence, and then we find that this word belongs to a class requiring some sort of distinctive treatment, which may even be the negative treatment of excluding that type of sentence. This distinctive treatment we may call the reactance of the category. ... 

A covert category may also be termed a cryptotype, a name which calls attention to the rather hidden, cryptic nature of such word-groups, especially when they are not strongly contrasted in idea, nor marked by frequently occurring reactances such as pronouns. They easily escape notice and may be hard to define, and yet may have profound influence on linguistic behaviour. ... Names of countries and cities in English form a cryptotype with the reactance that they are not referred to by personal pronouns as objects of the prepositions 'in, at, to, from'. We can say 'I live in Boston' but not 'That's Boston — I live in it'.

Cryptotypes

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 569):

Whorf (1956) distinguished between overt and covert categories and pointed out that covert categories were often also “cryptotypes” — categories whose meanings were complex and difficult to access. Many aspects of clause grammar, and of the grammar of clause complexes, are essentially cryptotypic.

Covert Categories: Cryptotypes

Whorf (1956: 88ff) apud Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 27):

A covert category may also be termed a cryptotype, a name which calls attention to the rather hidden, cryptic nature of such word-groups, especially when they are not strongly contrasted in idea, nor marked by frequently occurring reactances such as pronouns. They easily escape notice and may be hard to define, and yet may have profound influence on linguistic behaviour.

The Distinctive Treatment Of Covert Categories: Reactances

Whorf (1956: 88ff) apud Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 27):

A covert category is marked, whether morphemically or by sentence pattern, only in certain types of sentence and not in every sentence in which a word or element belonging to the category occurs. The class membership of the word is not apparent until there is a question of using it or referring to it in one of these special types of sentence, and then we find that this word belongs to a class requiring some sort of distinctive treatment, which may even be the negative treatment of excluding that type of sentence. This distinctive treatment we may call the reactance of the category.

Overt Categories

Whorf (1956: 88ff) apud Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 26-7):

An overt category is a category having a formal mark which is present (with only infrequent exceptions) in every sentence containing a member [instance] of the category. The mark need not be part of the same word to which the category may be said to be attached in a paradigmatic sense; i.e. it need not be a suffix, prefix, vowel change, or other ‘inflection’, but may be a detached word or a certain patterning of the whole sentence …

Cryptotypes Vs Phenotypes

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 26):

We consider not only overt categories but also covert ones. The understanding of covert categories in the grammar is due to Whorf (1956: 88ff), who made the distinction between overt categories or phenotypes and covert categories or cryptotypes …