El lenguaje en sentido muy general puede entenderse como la comunicación de algún significado por medio de símbolos (ordenados orgánicamente y con funciones dentro de un sistema).
"Language is the expression of ideas by means of speech-sounds combined into words. Words are combined into sentences, this combination answering to that of ideas into thoughts." Henry Sweet.
"A language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols by means of which a social group cooperates." Bernard Bloch and George L. Trager.
Estos símbolos son signos artificiales establecidos por convención. Una lengua también podría entenderse como un sistema de signos y de reglas para su uso (Saussure).
Podemos encontrar diferentes lenguajes : natural (lenguas) o artificial (matemático, lógico, pictórico, literario, gestual, etc). Entre los artificiales tenemos lenguajes técnicos (vocabulario natural con términos definidos con precisión) y lenguajes formales (con símbolos arbitrarios establecidos convencionalmente).
Si estudiamos los elementos representativos en el proceso de comunicación estaremos realizando una tarea propia de la semiótica (teoría general de los signos). Ella realizará análisis de corte sintáctico (estudiando los signos independientemente de sus significados), semántico (estudiando los signos en relación con las cosas a las que hacen referencia) y pragmático (estudiando los signos en relación a su uso).
No podemos decir que haya un nombre “real o verdadero” para las cosas : la relación nombre-cosa es artificial ; hay libertad de estipulación (para establecer nombres) pero también reglas de uso común (sino la comunicación linguística sería imposible).
El lenguaje cotidiano, a menudo confuso y contradictorio, caracterizado entre otras cosas por su vaguedad (falta de precisión en la designación volviendose dudoso el uso de una palabra) y su ambigüedad (polisemia o palabras con más de un significado) encuentra al entrar en el terreno de la ciencia una sistematización que implica de entrada una clarificación lógica elemental. Disminuye así la indeterminación del lenguaje corriente sometiéndolo a modificaciones y precisiones ineludibles.
Por supuesto que en ciertas ocasiones las palabras ambiguas son útiles y valorables (ejemplo de esto es un término utilizado con determinada intención en una poema). Como decíamos anteriormente muchos términos del lenguaje ordinario se caracterizan entre otras cosas por su vaguedad, en el sentido de que la clase de cosas designadas por ellos no está nítida y claramente delimitada de la clase de cosas no designadas por él. Los términos del lenguaje ordinario carecen de un grado importante de especificidad.
Si decimos que el lenguaje científico es claro y preciso ello se debe en parte porque la ciencia define claramente los conceptos que utiliza o va a utilizar y además crea lenguajes artificiales (símbolos químicos, matemáticos, palabras específicas) a través de definiciones determinadas por reglas de designación del tipo “en el presente contexto H indicará el elemento de peso atómico unitario”. Los símbolos básicos se combinarán conforme a reglas determinadas (llamadas reglas de formación) para formar configuraciones complejas. La propia aparición de lo cuantificable en ciencias, por ejemplo, involucra símbolos matemáticos y estadísticos.
Así, en otras palabras, se habla de términos específicos o técnicos o sea aquellos términos provistos de un significado establecido por convención (spin :cierto estado ligado a las partículas elementales). Los términos presupuestos pueden ser lógicos (ejemplo, los conectores) o designativos ordinarios (proviene del lenguaje ordinario :azul, brillante) o técnicos (de alguna teoría científica previa).
La comunicabilidad del conocimiento científico muestra que este no es inefable, inexpresable sino público (al menos dentro de las personas que manejan terminología básica de la ciencia en cuestión). Lo que es inefable puede tratar de ser captado por otras áreas humanas como el arte, pero no por las ciencias cuyo estilo informativo y no expresivo le impiden oscuridades de expresión.
Si bien muchos han pensado que sin lenguaje no habría posibilidad de pensamiento se sostiene hoy día la existencia, más bien, de pensamiento sin lenguaje. Para Chomsky el lenguaje es un sistema cognitivo innato independiente regido por leyes propias que se desenvuelve paulatinamente. Para Piaget el pensamiento y el lenguaje se generan en la acción y muchas veces el primero se desarrolla antes que el segundo. Para Vigotski y parte de la escuela soviética pensamiento y lenguaje se desarrollan independientemente y se fusionan. Algunos sostienen que el lenguaje se desarrolla antes que el pensamiento, otros a la inversa consideran que el lenguaje va siguiendo los progresos del desarrollo intelectual. Otros consideran que la función del lenguaje no es pareja a lo largo de la vida y que en momentos diferentes tienen lugar diversas actividades. Podríamos decir que de entre estas posiciones (y otras no mencionadas) hoy día se cree que el el lenguaje se desarrolla a partir del pensamiento y a partir de toda la actividad del individuo.
En otro orden de cosas, se podría plantear, dentro del marco de si un lenguaje puede expresar la realidad en las redes de sus símbolos. Para la hipótesis Sapir-Whorf la existencia de distintas palabras en una lengua puede ayudar a la categorización de objetos o fenómenos que en otra lengua son designados por una única palabra.
“Language is species-specific to man. Other members of the animal kingdom have the ability to communicate, through vocal noises or by other means, but the most important single feature characterizing human language against every known mode of animal communication, is its infinite productivity and creativity”.
“In many cultures men have seen in the ability to name an ability to control or to possess; this explains the reluctance, in several primitive and other communities, with which names are revealed to strangers and the taboo restrictions found in several parts of the world on using the names of persons recently dead. In modern civilized communities, it is instructive to consider the widespread and perhaps universal taboos on naming directly things considered obscene, blasphemous, or very fearful. Indeed, use of euphemistic substitutes for words referring to death and to certain diseases actually seems to be increasing in some civilized areas.”
“The intimate connection between language and thought, as opposed to the earlier assumed unilateral dependence of language on thought, opened the way to a recognition of the possibility that different language structures might in part favour or even determine different ways of understanding and thinking about the world. People do not all inhabit a world exactly the same in all particulars, and translation is not merely a matter of substituting different but equivalent labels for the contents of the same inventory. The fact that translation, though often difficult, is possible indicates that people are talking about similar worlds of experience in their various languages.”
“Languages in part create the world in which men live. Of course, many words do name existing bits and pieces of earth and heaven: "stone," "tree," "dog," "woman," "star," "cloud," and so on. Others, however, do not so much pick out what is there as classify it and organize one's relations with it and with each other with regard to it. Plants are vegetables or weeds according as groups of people classify them, and different plants are included and excluded by such classifications in different languages and different cultures. Some languages make different distinctions in their personal pronouns from those made in English. For example, in Malay, kita, which means "we," including the person addressed, is distinct from kami, a form for "we" that includes the speaker and a third person or persons but excludes the person addressed. In Japanese and in several other languages, a variety of words denoting the 1st and 2nd persons indicate additionally the observed or intended social relationship of those involved.”
“Some word meanings are harder to translate. "Right" and "wrong," "theft," "inheritance," "property," "debt," "sin," and "crime" (as different sorts of wrongdoing) are just a few of the words regulating one's conduct and relations with one's fellows in a particular culture. Translation becomes progressively harder as one moves to languages of more remote cultures, and it has been said that it requires "a unification of cultural context." Insofar as a person's understanding of the universe and of the relations between himself and other people is closely linked with the language he speaks, it must be assumed, and the evidence confirms this assumption, that the child progressively acquires such understanding along with his language.”
“A person can be as precise or as imprecise as he needs or wishes to be. In general, words are fairly imprecise; yet for particular purposes their meanings can be tightened up, usually by bringing in more words or phrases to divide up a given field in more detail. "Good" contrasts generally with "bad"; but one can, for example, grade students as "first-class," "excellent," "very good," "good," "fair," "poor," and "failed" (or "bad"). In this case, "good" now covers a restricted and relatively low place in a field of associated terms. Colour words get their meanings from their mutual contrasts. The field of visually discriminable hues is very large and goes far beyond the resources of any vocabulary as it is normally used. Children learn the central or basic colour words of their language fairly early and at the same time; such terms as red and green are normally learned before subdivisions such as crimson and scarlet or chartreuse. It is well known that languages make their primary divisions of the spectrum of colours in different places; Japanese aoi covers many of the hues referred to in English by "green" and "blue," while "blue" covers much of the range of the two Russian words goluboy and siny. While the actual colour vocabularies of languages differ, however, recent research by Brent Berlin and Paul Kay has tried to show that "there exist universally for humans eleven basic perceptual color categories" that serve as reference points for the colour words of a language, whatever number may be regularly employed at any time.”
“The best example of infinite precision available from a strictly limited lexical stock is in the field of arithmetic. Between any two whole numbers a further fractional or decimal number may always be inserted. Thus, it is possible to achieve any desired degree of quantitative precision appropriate to his purposes; hence the importance of quantitative statements in the sciences--any thermometric scale contains far more distinctions of temperature than are reasonably available in the vocabulary of a natural language ("hot”, "warm”,"cold”, and so on). For this reason mathematics has been described as the ideal use of language, but for many purposes in everyday life the very imprecision of natural languages is the source of their strength and adaptability.”
“A good deal of the flexibility of languages has been exploited in man's progressive understanding and conceptualizing of the world he lives in and of his relations with other men. Different cultures and different periods have seen this process differently developed. The anthropological linguist Edward Sapir put it well: "The 'real world' is, to a large extent, unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group."
“Languages are different and the world is seen differently through the eyes of speakers of different languages.”
“Does language shape culture or vice versa? What influence does language have on perception and thought? How do language patterns relate to cultural patterns? These questions, which had been posed earlier by the German scholars Johann Gottfried von Herder and Wilhelm von Humboldt and their followers in the idealist-romanticist tradition, emerged again in the United States as a result of the discovery of the vastly different structure of American Indian languages, as delineated by the American anthropological linguists Edward Sapir and Benjamin L. Whorf. They noticed, for example, that Eskimo has many words for snow, whereas Aztec employs a single term for the concepts of snow, cold, and ice. The notion that the structure of a language conditions the way in which a speaker of that language thinks is known as the Whorfian hypothesis, and there is much controversy over its validity.”
“An examination of the lexical structure of languages throws some light on the relations among various aspects of man's conceptualization. Spatial relations and their expression seem to lie very deep in the content of vocabulary. Words referring to time are drawn metaphorically from spatial words with great frequency: "a long/short time”, "the near future”, "far ahead/separated in time”. Although time is a continuum, people readily divide it up into bits and record it rather as they do materials extended in space: "five years”, "three months”, "six seconds”. Spatial terms are also freely used in the expression of other, more abstract relationships: "higher temperature”, "higher quality”, "lower expectations”, "summit of a career”, "a distant relationship”, "close friends”, "over and above what had been said”
“It has been maintained that the human brain has a preference for binary oppositions, or polarities. If this is so, it will help explain the numerous pairs of related antonyms that are found: "good, bad"; "hot, cold"; "high, low"; "right, wrong"; "dark, light"; and so on. Their most general use is in binary contrasts.”
“Every individual's language is acquired by man as a member of society, along with and at the same time as other aspects of that society's culture in which he is brought up. Society and language are mutually indispensable.”
“Language is transmitted culturally; that is, it is learned. Vocabulary is learnt in an individual way : children are exposured to a random collection of utterances that they encounter. And the word is connected with the way it is lerant. All of what goes under the title of language teaching presupposes and relies on the prior knowledge of a first language in its basic vocabulary and essential structure, acquired before school age.”
“If language is transmitted as part of culture, it is no less true that culture as a whole is transmitted very largely through language, insofar as it is explicitly taught. The fact that mankind has a history in the sense that animals do not is entirely the result of language.”
“The part played by variations within a language in differentiating social and occupational groups in a society has been analysed. In language transmission this tends to be self-perpetuating unless deliberately interfered with. Children are in general brought up within the social group to which their parents and immediate family circle belong, and they learn the dialect and speaking styles of that group along with the rest of the subculture and behavioral traits and attitudes that are characteristic of it. This is a largely unconscious and involuntary process of acculturation, but the importance of the linguistic manifestations of social status and of social hierarchies is not lost on aspirants for personal advancement in stratified societies. The deliberate cultivation of an appropriate dialect, in its lexical, grammatical, and phonetic features, has been the self-imposed task of many persons wishing "to better themselves". Shaw's Pygmalion presents Eliza's need to unlearn her native Cockney if she is to rise in the social scale. Middle class people, mostly adolescents, who for some reason want to "opt out" of the social group of their parents make every effort to abandon the distinctive aspects of the social dialect that would mark them, along with dress and general behaviour. Culturally and subculturally determined taboos play a part in all this, and persons desirous of moving up or down in the social scale have to learn what words to use and what words to avoid if they are to be accepted and to "belong" in their new position.
The same considerations apply to changing one's language as to changing one's dialect. Language changing is harder for the individual and is generally a rarer occurrence, but it is likely to be widespread in any mass immigration movement. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the eagerness with which immigrants and the children of immigrants from continental Europe living in the United States learned and insisted on speaking English is an illustration of their realization that English was the linguistic badge of full membership in their new homeland.”
“In the special languages of games and of trades and professions, game learners, apprentices, and professional students learn the locutions together with the rest of the game or the job. The specific words and phrases occur in the teaching process and are observed in use, and the novice is only too eager to display an easy competence with such phraseology as a mark of his full membership of the group.”
Sobre el problema de las traducciones...
“Translations problems and conflicts arise because of factors noticed in the use and functioning of language: languages do not operate in isolation but within and as part of cultures, and cultures differ from each other in various ways. Even between the languages of communities whose cultures are fairly closely allied, there is by no means a one-to-one relation of exact lexical equivalence.”
“In their lexical meanings, words acquire various overtones and associations that are not shared by the nearest corresponding words in other languages; this may vitiate a literal translation.” “The translation of poetry, is especially difficult. This is because poetry is, in the first instance, carefully contrived to express exactly what the poet wants to say. Second, to achieve this end, the poet calls forth all the resources of the language in which he is writing, matching the choice of words, the order of words, and grammatical constructions, as well as phonological features peculiar to the language in metre, perhaps supplemented by rhyme, assonance, and alliteration. The available resources differ from language to language. Because lexical, grammatical, and metrical considerations are all interrelated and interwoven in poetry, a satisfactory literary translation is usually very far from a literal word.”
“Translation on the whole is an art, not a science. Guidance can be given and general principles can be taught, but after that it must be left to the individual's own feeling for the two languages concerned. The Italian epigram remains justified: Traduttore traditore "The translator is a traitor."
El texto en inglés procede de: Bishop, Bernard, Science vocabulary in a few words, Eagle, Austin, 1995
