[lit-ideas] Re: Language, Justice and Social Practices (long)

  • From: Eric Yost <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Thu, 29 Sep 2005 17:39:29 -0400

Let me try to rewrite the earlier post.

Walter wrote, concerning teaching an illiterate deaf person to play
chess: However it is that she identifies the one set of inferential relations (concept) from the other and differentiates between them I would call a naming procedure.

Calling what the illiterate deaf person does in learning chess a "naming procedure" is difficult for me. I tend to think of "naming" as involving symbol and referent within a framing context.

When an illiterate deaf person learns and plays chess without having names for the pieces, they would presumably see or identify a pawn as a shape (pawn shape) or a location (starting location, current location) and generalize that this shape or location is characteristic of a "type" of chess piece with certain powers of movement and capturing.

Earlier, I raised the issue of metonymy (the trope which uses a part to identify wholes, without transferring qualities as metaphor does, and which includes synechdoche) in naming.

As an example of metonymy and its framing context, I adduced a waiter working in a restaurant, who says to the chef, "The nonsmoking table is hungry." The waiter would be using metonymy (nonsmoking table substituted for the people at the nonsmoking table) governed by framing context (restaurant with smoking and nonsmoking sections) to communicate a specific message ("hurry up with the food for that table in nonsmoking; the people there are hungry").

Given the above, I was asking whether the use of "pawn" was in any way similar? If we state a move "pawn to rook six," are we using a metonym (generic pawn implying all potential moves of "pawn" and referring to that particular pawn in that particular position) within a framing context (pawns on the rook file, meaning we say "pawn to king's rook six" if pawns can move along both rook files, but only are "pawn to rook six" if only one rook file move is possible) to communicate a specific message (move that particular pawn in that particular position now).

While that could be a stretch, I think introducing the metonymic-frame function of naming could advance the discussion.

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