What are arguments made of?

Language
Last time we discussed what arguments are for, their purposes. We saw that
arguments have at least three purposes. Namely, persuasion, justification, and
explanation. We also saw that one way to explain something is to cite its
purpose. So we can understand why Joe went to the store by seeing that he went
to the store because he wanted some milk. So his purpose was to get milk.
Similarly, we can understand arguments by looking at their purposes. And that's
what we did last time. But this time we're looking at a different kind of
explanation. And as we saw, one way to explain things is to look at the material.
So you want to understand why a MacBook Air is so light? The answer is, it's
made out of aluminum. Similarly, if we want to understand arguments, we're
going to gain understanding by looking carefully at the material that they're
made out of. And we saw that arguments are sets of sentences, statements and
propositions, so that means they're made out of language. So in this lecture and
the next few, we're going to look at the nature of language in order to better
understand arguments. So, if we know that arguments are made out of language,
we know that the only creatures who can give arguments are ones that can use
language. Now some people think that other animals can use language and
there's a minimal kind of language that other animals can use. But other animals
cannot use language that's complex enough to make arguments. It might seem
that there's some exceptions, here's one possibility. [FOREIGN]. But no matter
what it sounds like, this goat is not really arguing.
Maybe he's fighting. Maybe he's fending off what he takes to be an enemy. But
he's not arguing. So if other animals can use language, we can't define humans
as the animal that talks, but we can define humans as the animal that argues. Or
as Aristotle said the rational animal, the animal that reasons because other
animals don't do that. Humans are the only one that argues and reasons in this
sense. So, we could understand humans and arguments better if we understand
language better. Now I can't tell you everything that needs to be said about
language, you'd need to take a linguistics course for that and I recommend that
you try one because it's very interesting. But here I'm only going to be able to
make four basic points about language. First of all, language is important.
Second, it's conventional. Third, it's representational, and fourth, it's social. That
should at least get us going in understanding what arguments are made of. First,
language is important. It would be extremely difficult to live life without
language. Just try to imagine. What it would be like. It's really hard to imagine,
but think about someone like Helen Keller. Who was born able to see and hear,
but very shortly thereafter, lost her ability to see and hear. It was only much later
in life that she gained the ability to use language because she never had that in
her early years. And when she gained that ability, she was amazed. [SOUND].
>> W-A-T-E-R, water. It has a name. W-A-T. [SOUND] . >> When Helen Keller
gained the ability to use language, and to communicate. she didn't become able
to see or hear, she still couldn't see or hear but she could do amazing things. She
went around the country giving presentations, she graduated from Radcliff
College. All of that was made available to her simply by adding language and
communication to her life. So language is extremely useful. And that explains
why it's all around us. Just imagine walking down the streets of a city, and all the
signs that you'd see. You'd just see words here, there, and everywhere. And now
we have a mystery. If we're not paying attention to language, then how can we

use it so well to achieve so many purposes? And the answer to that lies in the
second general feature of language that I want to talk about. Namely, language
is conventional. But what's a convention? Remember that in the United States
people drive on the right hand side of the road. That's our convention. But what
does that mean? It means that there's a general pattern of behavior That most
people throughout society obey on a regular basis and they criticize people who
deviate from that pattern. And the same applies to language. We have certain
patterns of using words in certain ways and when people deviate from those
patterns, we criticize them. We say they're misspeaking or it's ungrammatical. Of
course, conventions can vary. Everybody knows that there are many countries
around the world where people don't drive on the right hand side of the road,
they drive on the left hand side of the road. The United Kingdom's one of them,
but there are lots more. And the same applies to language. You could have the
same word that's used to mean very different things in different languages. Most
notorious example is football. In the United States, it's used to refer to American
football. Whereas, in the rest of the world it is used to refer to what Americans
call soccer. And people in the rest of the world think that America is kind of silly
because you don't use your feet on the ball except for punting and place kicking
in football. But whether it makes sense or not, the point here is simply that the
conventions can vary from one part of the world to the other. And of course you
can do that with any word, you could, in English use the word money to refer to
socks. at least the English language could've done that, it didn't but it could
have. So in this way, conventions seem to be kind of arbitrary, it could've been
very different. But language is far from completely arbitrary, because the
conventions of language have limits. And two of these limits that I want to
emphasize come from the fact that language is also representational and social.
So first, language is representational. When we use language we're often trying
to refer to objects in the world and describe facts in the world. And you can't
change those objects or those facts merely by changing your language. One
good story to illustrate this is about the young Lincoln. When he was a lawyer, he
supposedly examined a witness during a trial and he said, okay how many legs
does a horse have? And the witness said four. And then Lincoln said, well if we
call a tail a leg.
Then how many legs does a horse have? And the witness said, well, then, I
suppose the horse would have five legs. And Lincoln said absolutely not, that's
wrong. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg. And the point of the story,
whether it's true historically or not, is that language cannot change the facts of
the world. It can't make horses have five legs if you merely change your
language.
Here's another example, suppose that you don't have much money but you
happen to have a lot of socks in your drawer. Well, you could say, I'm going to
use the word money to refer to socks, and now all of a sudden, I've got lots of
money. I'm not poor anymore.
It ain't going to work. And that's because language, again, can't change your
financial situation because that's a fact about the world, not about how you're
using the word socks, or the word money. And the other limit on the conventions
of language, comes from the fact that language is social. Sure, sometimes we
talk to ourselves and use language to write things down. Write notes to

ourselves, for example, without other people around. But basically language
evolved because of its social function. And what that means is that there's a
point in following the conventions of the language. as shared by the rest of the
society that speaks that language. You know, I've always thought that it was kind
of silly that grapefruits are called grapefruits. Sure they're fruits, but they don't
look like grapes at all. They look more like lemons. They're like really big lemons
and that's why I think they ought to be called mega lemons. But if I went to a
restaurant and I wanted to order grapefruit juice, so I'd turn to the the service
person and said I'd like some mega lemon juice, I probably wouldn't get what I
wanted. And so even if I think the language is not using the right conventions,
there's a point in following the conventions of the language in order to be able to
communicate with other people and get what I want. And again, the great
philosophers Monty Python saw this very well when they produced their little clip
called, The Man Who Speaks Only in Anagrams. >> Our first guest in the studio
tonight is a man who talks entirely in anagrams. >> [UNKNOWN]. >> Do you
enjoy this?
>> I stom certainly od. Revy chum so. >> And, what's your name? >> Hamrag.
Hamrag Yatlerot. >> So, the point is obvious. Namely, language is shared. And
once it's shared, then it makes sense to actually follow the conventions of society
even if you don't like them. Overall then, language is important and it's
conventional in ways that might seem arbitrary but actually is limited in
important ways by the fact that language is also representational and social. But
it's kind of cheap to say language is conventional. Which are the conventions?
Which are the rules that language follows? And this is actually extremely
complex because language follows rules or conventions at many different levels.
Just take a real simple example, you walk into a pizza shop and you say give me
pepperoni. Well the person then fixes a pepperoni pizza and you pay for it. But
how did that work, that you said give me pepperoni? Well, first of all notice that
you had to use words that were meaningful to the person you were speaking to.
Gimme wasn't a word in English a long time ago, but this person understands
gimme as a word, and therefore they can understand it. But in addition to those
semantic constraints. You also have to have physical production constraints. You
have to say it loud enough. If the pizza shop is really noisy, then you have to
speak pretty loudly to get the person behind the counter to understand what
you're saying. You also have to put the words in the right order. If instead of
saying, gimme a pepperoni pizza, you said pizza a gimme pepperoni. They might
not understand at all what you're saying. So there are structural combination
rules that you have to follow as well. And there are also etiquette rules. In some
pizza places if you just said, gimme pepperoni, the waiter might say, well, forget
it sir. I don't serve such impolite people. I certainly would say that to my son if
my son said, give me pepperoni. I wouldn't get him a pizza.
I'd say you need to ask me properly. so rules of etiquette can also get in the way
of communication and cooperation. So language operates at all of these levels.
Physical production, semantics are the meanings of words, syntax are the rules
of grammar and etiquette. Now all of this might seem obvious to you and, and
probably should be obvious to you. but the rules of the language are not always
obvious and that's what we're going to be learning throughout this course. I'll
start with a simple example what's this? Well, that is a finger. Okay? But what's

this? Haaaaaaa. That is a singer. This is not a finger. Haaaaaaa. And that's not a
singer. Why do we pronounce the words finger with a hard g and the word singer
with a soft g. That's a rule that we all follow, but very few people know the rule
behind that pronunciation. So, do you know the rule? Take a little while and think
about it. Have you got it yet?
Okay, I'll tell you the answer. When a word ends in nger and is derived from a
verb that ends in ng then you get a soft g like singer. But when the word that
ends in nger is not derived from a verb that ends in ng then you get either a hard
g like finger or a kind of medium g like plunger or danger. Now, when do you get
that medium g or that hard g? That's a trickier question. I don't know the answer
to that one, which shows that we can all use language according to rules without
knowing what the rules are. We don't have to be conscious of the rules at all. And
a lot of what we're going to be doing in this course, is looking behind our
language to try to figure out the rules that govern the way we use language,
especially when we're making arguments in order to better understand what
we're doing. Some of the answers we give will be obvious, once you mention
them, but I bet you hadn't thought of them before.