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The linguistics encyclopedia 444
such an idea. The use, then, of words, is to be sensible marks of ideas; and
the ideas they stand for are their proper and immediate signification.
The theory underpinning Locke’s view is, then, that language is an instrument for
reporting thought, and that thought consists of successions of ideas in consciousness. As
these ideas are private, we need a system of intersubjectively available sounds and marks,
so connected to ideas that the proper use of them by one person will arouse the
appropriate idea in another person’s mind.
A major problem with this theory is that it does not explain how we can discover what
the proper use of a word is. Ideas are private, so how can I know that when I use a word
to stand for an idea of mine, the idea that that word evokes in your mind is like my idea?
I cannot have your idea, and you cannot have mine, so how is it possible for us to check
that our theory of meaning is correct? This problem is not solved by trying to clarify the
notion of ‘idea’, or by reformulating the theory in such a way that ‘idea’ is replaced with
the term, ‘concept’; any referent posited in speakers’ minds is going to be affected by the
problem. In Locke’s theory, God acts as guarantor of sameness of meaning (see Locke,
1977, Book 3, ch. 1); but as Peirce (1868) among others has pointed out, to say that ‘God
makes it so’ is not the type of explanation we typically seek in the sciences, whether
natural or human.
A further difficulty with Locke’s view is that it assumes that meaning pre-exists its
linguistic expression in the form of thoughts in the mind. But, as Grayling puts it (1982,
pp. 186–7):
It is arguable whether thought and language are independent of one
another. How could thought above a rudimentary level be possible
without language? This is not an easy issue to unravel, but certain
observations would appear to be pertinent. For one thing, it is somewhat
implausible to think that prelinguistic man may have enjoyed a fairly rich
thought-life, and invented language to report and communicate it only
when the social demand for language became pressing. Philosophical
speculation either way on this matter would constitute a priori
anthropology at its worst, of course, but it seems clear that anything like
systematic thought requires linguistic ability to make it possible. A
caveman’s ability to mull over features of his environment and his
experience of it, in some way which was fruitful of his having opinions
about it, seems incredible unless a means of thinking ‘articulately’ is
imputed to him. The net effect of the ‘private language’ debate, instigated
by some of Wittgenstein’s remarks in the Philosophical Investigations,
strongly suggests that language (this ‘articulateness’) could not be an
enterprise wholly private to some individual, but must be, and therefore
must have started out as, a shared and public enterprise.
Moreover, it appears on reflection plausible to say that the richer the
language, the greater the possibility its users have for thinking
discriminatively about the world. An heuristic set of considerations in
support of this thought might go as follows. Consider two men walking
through a wood, one of whom is an expert botanist with the name of every