Preview: An Initial Grasp
In the section to follow, the ways of using language are described sequentially from L'1 up through to L'7. Here, I will explain the system in a more informal way with obvious examples that seek to allow you to get an immediate feel for the different types.
Logical Language
In explaining this Taxonomy, I try to show that the propositions are quasi-axiomatic. For example, you need deliberate steps (tactical objectives-PH6L1) as a means to reach a desired outcome (strategic objectives-PH6L2). Is this debatable? Do the names fit? People commonly combine specification of an outcome with steps to reach it. The formula for this combination is PsH6G21 and I call this entity a plan. Is much evidence needed for this? All other pairs of adjacent levels of purpose are logically required—and are found to exist.
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My concern is to be able to use words effectively. That requires me to make the meaning of any word chosen as a THEE name immediately apparent and wholly unambiguous. This focus on meaning-L6 suggests that this use of language is the sixth method: L'6.
If you spoke French or Chinese you would use different terms. In the Taxonomy, the name and the phenomenon that it is referring to should be in a direct one-to-one correspondence irrespective of personal associations or national language. That means that the most precise and universal name is a formula. One typical feature of formulae is that they must have a logic.
This use of quasi-axioms or assumptions and a demand for logic leads me to call this the Logical Method. It is used where it is necessary to specify and systematize fundamentals through using unique identifiers for each thing in a field e.g. it is required for the philosophical or observational foundations of any science.
Concrete Language
Now let's turn to a wholly different situation at the other end of the spectrum. Here you have to deal with something right in front of you: preparing a new vegetable meal. Unless you perform very specific actions, it won't turn out as delicious as promised. An exact account, the recipe, that guides you each step of the way turns a worry into a pleasure. But manuals, even recipes, can also be rather overwhelming at times: it depends upon the number of steps and the difficulty of the actions to be taken.
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Have you ever put flat-pack furniture together? There is often just a set of diagrams with numbers and letters and it is left for you work it out. If it is complicated, then instructions explain: "First take dowels A1 and A2 and insert into slots C-X and C-Y of beam-3K ensuring that the rough edge is facing upwards ." Every word is used in direct connection with an action or a physical thing.
Such language is often used with children. You might even say to a friend: "get a cup from behind the kettle, make my tea with a Ceylon bag, put in a spoonful of sugar, then place it on my desk behind the computer". This use of language is founded on a need for correct actions. It often implies or specifies a sequence as here. It is wholly dependent on identifying stimuli-L1 that generate obvious perceptions (if attention is properly applied). So it becomes the L'1 approach and I have named it: Concrete.
Associative Language
But neither of the above is at all like the language of everyday interaction with familiars. With your family at home, your friends in a café or your colleagues in the workplace, you have a unique and semi-private way of communicating. Sentences are often left unfinished, irrelevancies intrude into the flow, terms have idiosyncratic meanings. The surprising thing is that it works perfectly well—for the insiders. Naturally, it is liable to mislead or confuse outsiders.
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Here each person in an exchange allows a subjective flow of links to whatever comes up. Words-ideas and gestures-looks flow easily within the group. The meaning is immediately understood in the moment by these insiders. At work, for example: "get the schedule from the cabinet and ensure that supplier fellow doesn't try any of his usual tricks" is felt to be explicit and unambiguous. So the correspondence here is with signal-L2 which is inherently unambiguous.
Note that as an outsider, you would recognize the instruction as grammatical and inherently sensible, but you would have no idea of precisely what it entails. You cannot grasp the meaning because you lack the necessary associations to the key terms—which schedule? which cabinet? , what supplier? what tricks? Because of this dependence on spontaneously available associations, I call the method: Associative-L'2.
Gestalt Language
You know that poets and playwrights use language in a special way, often with imagery or juxtaposition of terms that awakens deep feelings. They create a "work" where wholeness is important. So do those working seriously in other arts—music, painting, sculpture—when these are viewed as communication. In all cases, the goal is to communicate creatively some rounded overall picture of a particular human condition, emotion or situation. The recipients must be moved in some way. We admire those who can evoke the spirit inherent in their subject and capture truths of life.
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Meaning is created in a way that generates significant inner experiences. There is a deliberate selection of fresh metaphors, images, sounds or shapes to explore or explain an issue. This imaginative process brings material to life and allows painful matters to enter awareness. The focus on the right combination of terms to generate profound experiences suggests that the correspondence is with terms-L5.
Language is usually described as being heightened. The vocabulary may be simple, but understanding the message is not helped by using a dictionary. In some cases, others who have made a study of the material may help us attune better so as to appreciate it properly. Because the evocation of a holistic sense, including spirit and feeling, is the core, I name this approach Gestalt-L'5.
Conceptual Language
Utterly different again are scientists who work in diverse disciplinary communities, each studying within a single field and rarely engaging with outsiders. Because words are essential to develop and capture knowledge, disciplines develop a specialized terminology, jargon, that is impenetrable for the uninitiated. It's easy to feel stupid when your own language seems so foreign.
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Those who investigate an area agree on what certain terms mean by adhering to specific definitions. The defined term may then no longer be used vaguely in group dialogue and it is called a "concept". Sticking to socially agreed definitions prevents meaning drift through subjective preferences or idiosyncratic personal intrusions. Those who use the agreed concepts are aware there is a system, and that the use of any one concept involves and implies a net of other concepts. This suggests a natural correspondence to signs-L3.
Any specialist jargon becomes impenetrable to outsiders, particularly as the same term may be defined very differently in different fields: e.g. "value" is used both in mathematical science and in political science. The system of concepts is the basis for meaningful discussions and writing in the particular field. So I name the approach: Conceptual-L'3.
Mythic Language
Using language based on dream-like images is something else again. Envisage a deity as a never-consumed burning bush, or a woman with snakes for hair whose gaze turns you to stone. It can be tempting to summarily dismiss such images as nonsense, but it is the only way in which we can transcend mundane reality. This is a distinct method with the potential for profound effects.
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Understanding strange and often utterly unexpected images depends on active use of the imagination. We must be open and surrender to the image to receive the communication. So the natural correspondence within the primary hierarchy is to openness-L7.
Although everyone can potentially respond, extended use of mythic language seems to be relatively unusual. Short bursts are common as part of charismatic interactions. Actively decoding such communications depends on a conviction that there is an Absolute Reality or a spiritual realm. Not everyone shares this view. The formal name chosen for this method is: Mythic-L'7.
Universal Language
What we all crave is to understand what the other person means by their verbal and non-verbal communications. We may not truly understand, but as listener or reader we want to feel that we understand. As public speaker or writer to a general audience via a newspaper article or blog, we also want to feel that we will be understood in a way that disposes the audience to agree or accept what is said. We commonly want even more: to persuade them to act. That depends on using language in a particular way.
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Words and phrases, as well as non-verbal aspects of communication, can be selected so as to accord with implicit and explicit societal conventions about usage. The presence of automatic associations e.g. greenery with freshness, money with power, must be harnessed. So the natural correspondence here is with symbols-L4 which are conventions that provide for affiliation and assume socialization.
What is said in the public realm is not focused primarily on facts, but on values because these underpin belonging, group formation and social development. Values activate emotions and desires, potentially intensely. So the language recognizes popular mood and applies a range of rhetorical methods to generate a persuasive quality. Because everyone in society will understand in some fashion, this way of using language is termed universal.
A Typical Typology
I have ended with the way of using language that is commonly assumed to be "normal": i.e. using language so that everyone can understand and be understood—the universal method. But, as you can see, there is no normal. The universal approach is not only one among many methods, but naturally results in communications that are often misleading, if not downright nonsense and even disruptive or harmful.
But it would be quite wrong to attack one method or claim superiority for another. As usual in THEE typologies, no one method for using language is inherently right or superior or better than any other method. Each has its own way to generate meaning. Each is a system with an internally consistent logic. Each has its own distinctive qualities, with certain limitations and drawbacks. As a result, each is essential in some situations and useless or inappropriate in others.
Understanding the properties of each of these methods will help us communicate more effectively and ensure a better handling of communications targeted at us.
In the topics to follow, there are more details and comparisons between these methods. By the end, you should be able to easily distinguish them—and possibly wonder why you never noticed it before.
This framework will become the foundation for understanding much more about:
- group formation around a shared reality, &
- work and domains of responsibility in society.
Originally posted: 25-May-2013. Updated: 20-Aug-2016. Last amended: 10-Feb-2023.