Ethics and Second-Order Cybernetics - Understanding Understanding: Essays on Cybernetics and Cognition - page 296

It is left to the naive to believe that magic can be explained. Magic cannot
be explained. Magic can only be practiced, as you all well know. Reflecting
on the magic of language is similar to reflecting upon a theory of the brain.
As much as one needs a brain to reflect upon a theory of the brain, one
needs the magic of language to reflect upon the magic of language. It is the
magic of those notions that they need themselves to come into being. They
are of second-order. It is also the way language protects itself against expla-
nation by always speaking about itself.
There is a word for language, namely “language.” There is a word for
word, namely “word.” If you don't know what word means, you can look it
up in a dictionary. I did that. I found it to be an “utterance.” I asked myself,
“What is an utterance?” I looked it up in the dictionary. The dictionary said
that it means “to express through words.” So here we are back where we
started. Circularity; A implies A.
But this is not the only way language protects itself against explanation.
In order to confuse her explorer she always runs on two different tracks. If
you chase language up one track, she jumps to the other. If you follow her
there, she is back on the first. What are these two tracks? One track is the
track of appearance. It runs through a land that appears stretched out
before us; the land we are looking at as though through a peephole. The
other track is the track of function. It runs through the land that is as much
a part of us as we are a part of it; the land that functions like an extension
of our body.
When language is on the track of appearance it is a monologue. There
are noises produced by pushing air past vocal cords. There are the words,
the grammar, the syntax, the well formed sentences. Along with these noises
goes the denotative pointing. Point to a table, make the noise “table”; point
to a chair, make the noise “chair.”
Sometimes it does not work. Margaret Mead quickly learned the collo-
quial language of many tribes by pointing to things and waiting for the
appropriate noises. She told me that once she came to a particular tribe,
pointed to different things, but always got the same noises, “chumulu.” A
primitive language she thought, only one word! Later she learned that “chu
mulu” means “pointing with finger.”
When language switches to the track of function it is dialogic. There are,
of course, these noises; some of them may sound like “table,” others like
“chair.” But there need not be any tables or chairs because nobody is point-
ing at tables or chairs. These noises are invitations to the other to make
some dance steps together. The noises “table” and “chair” bring to reso-
nance those strings in the mind of the other which, when brought to vibra-
tion, would produce noises like “table” and “chair.” Language in its function
is connotative.
In its appearance, language is descriptive. When you tell your story, you
tell it as it was; the magnificent ship, the ocean, the big sky, and the flirt you
had that made the whole trip a delight. But for whom do you tell it? That's