Prace komisji nauk.pdf - Instytut Filologii Angielskiej Uniwersytetu ...

Both answers are problematic. Let us take the second answer. It would be
absurd if we blamed older people for having changed their language to the
extent they did during their lives. Maybe they introduced some new words
consciously and intentionally but other changes took place beyond their
consciousness and intention. But the first answer is also problematic: somehow
speakers changed their language while speaking it, mostly unconsciously and
without the intention to change it.
The invisible hand
The problem can be solved by means of the theory of the invisible hand. This
theory reconciles both answers, by avoiding the incorrect elements in them and
integrating the correct ones. For this theory I refer to the German linguist Rudi
Keller (cf. Keller 1990). The theory was for the first time applied to economics.
I mention the names of Bernard de Mandeville and Adam Smith. 3
Let me first illustrate the invisible hand by means of a non-linguistic
example. Take an university building, a college, in the middle of which there is
a court with a lawn. There a two entrances diagonally opposite each other. Of
course, the students and their teachers are expected to go from one entrance to
the other by walking around the lawn. But they are always in a hurry or they are
lazy, and so they go across the grass, although this is forbidden. A new path is
the ultimate result. They are responsible for the origin of the path but – and this
is very important – they had not the intention to create it. Their acts had a
different intention; they had a quite understandable economic motivation: to
save energy. This does not imply that they were aware of this intention: it is
possible to do things with a special intention without being aware of it. What I
said can be visualized by means of scheme 1.
3 To avoid misunderstandings: I do not use the invisible hand as an economic ideology but
only as a means to explain how things can develop.
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