String and Language

Language - as revealed meaning, and as it is presented by the semiotic
indices of mathematics, and by the signs of the written or spoken word,
is not a string (a string of signs, indices, symbols, or words). The
ordering 'argument' that fixes the string as a string is not found in
the meaning that arises out of the text or string, nor is the latter
found in the ordering argument.

A string does not presuppose the properties of the elements of which it
is constituted. To put it another way, the properties of the elements
of a string are not conferred upon the string.
However, the string is necessary to the presentation of language in
order that language can yield consistent meaning within a given
rule-creating consensus, or language community. Nevertheless, there is
no "relationship" between a string and the meaning that it presents:
the consensus maps the revealed meaning presented by the string to the
elements in the string - this mapping does not constitute a
relationship between the string and its meaning. This 'mapping'
demonstrates the arbitrary nature of rule-following within a consensual
majority. (It also seems to place anti-realism at the heart of
mathematical endeavours.)

This conclusion is important. The problem of presenting revealed
meanings through the literary sign that has plagued Saussurian
linguistics is a problem that can only be resolved by abandoning the
sign as an element that is relationally constitutive of the string of
the text. The sign is not 'related' to the string, but is mapped to it.
Accordingly, the meaning that arises from a reading only of the "text
as a whole", that is, the string, does not arise as a summation or
sequenced reading of the elements of the text or string, but emerges in
spite of it.

We approach a concept of language that is tranformative. The revealed
meaning of a string or text, as argued above, emerges independently of,
and is not constituted of, its signs or semiotic indices. However, and
in opposition to nearly all that has been written about the way
language presents meaning, meaning does not arise out of, or from the
text, but is mapped to it. Language does 'not' present meaning. This at
once spares us the problem of searching for another mechanism, another
textual object that can present an emergent meaning from the string as
a whole, a task which the Saussurian sign could not fulfill. It also
allows us to remove the implicit, obscure causal mechanisms which have
riddled the theories of formal studies of language. For, with a
'mapping', no causal vectors are invoked.

Now we can present a concept of language. The problem of how meaning
arises, or is emergent from, a text or string as a whole - the problem
of an apparent lack of a textual object that could fulfill this role,
is resolved if emergent meaning is itself abandoned. In its place we
can say that meaning is fundamentally non-linguistic; and that meaning
does not arise from the signs and indices of a text, or, is 'emergent'
from the text as a whole, but is placed upon a text - meaning is mapped
to a text or string by a rule-forming governing consensus. Where
meaning issues from is not a crucial point here, and I do not explore
it, although we may want to invoke perhaps the concept of
Wittgensteinian pre-linguistic 'forms of life'.

Language then, does not present meaning, but meaning is mapped to
strings, signs and indices. Now there is one instance where language as
sign and indice DOES present meaning, and that is in interpretation and
translation. These are fundamentally different from the direct use of
language, or language as it is commonly perceived and used. To date,
the studies of language have been interpretationist, studies of
translation mechanisms, bearing the erronous assumption that the
mechanisms of translation and implicit causalites of interpretation of
signs and indices are also those that establish common discourse.

Quote this source please, if used.

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