Milli mála - 01.01.2012, Page 208

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WINDY WORDS: TOWARDS A PNEUMATIC LINGUISTICS
at Heidegger, centuries later, calling his mode of thought ‘preju-
dice nurtured through the centuries [those same centuries!] that
thinking is a matter of ratiocination, that is, calculation in the wid-
est sense’ (Heidegger 1982: 70). (Yet we trust that Heidegger, too,
shrank from the burning of Giordano Bruno.)
We accept, then, as liberal-minded thinkers, the computer
metaphor to explain our brains; but it does not follow that all the
characteristics of language activity and development are present
solely in this ‘hard-wiring’. Even the computer metaphor would
presumably allow for software as well as hardware. There is no
reason that I can see why the organisation of language should not
in some regard be a feature rather of the language system than of
neural configuration. Large domains of language are clearly acoustic
rather than psychological, while others appear to depend upon the
structure of ambient reality rather than any other structure. As such
they are supposedly prior to their sojourn in our brains. While it is
clear (still within our metaphor) that the diachronic development
of language involves complex flows of input and feedback among
large populations of human brains, and that the individual brains
themselves are the repositories of this information, this does not
preclude the possibility of organising principles in the system itself.
In other words, we have no grounds for ruling out the presence of a
dynamics of language initiated outside the human consciences in-
volved, beyond a certain distaste for the idea.
Bemoaning the attrition and decay of language in the middle of
the last century with the claim that “the words themselves seem to
have lost some of their precision and vitality”, George Steiner
(1985: 44)23 is compelled to confront this distaste, admitting that
his formulation “assumes that language has a ‘life’ of its own that
goes beyond metaphor … Most linguists would regard implications
of internal, independent vitality in language as suspect.” This is
also my experience. When I have mooted with colleagues the
possibility of an autonomous dynamic in language, this has typically
provoked strong reactions: the idea of language working on the
human brain instead of the autonomous brain generating language
23 Steiner’s “The Retreat from the Word” is written in 1961.
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