Lost and found language: From fuzzy logic to yūgen

On the one side of the language studies, we have linguists who support the practical and theoretical autonomy of language and linguistics and argue that “linguistics must attempt to grasp language, not as a conglomerate of non-linguistic (e.g., physical, physio-logical, psychological, logical, sociological) phenomena, but as a self-sufficient totality, a structure sui generis” (Hjelmslev, 1961, 5–6). On the other side, there are researchers who declare that ‘‘linguistics does not need to postulate the existence of languages as part of its theoretical apparatus’’ (Harris, 2003, 46) or “if you want to learn about language, forget about language!” (Steffensen, 2011, 204). By resorting to the methodology of fuzzy logic and fuzzy sets, ideas of Greek and Eastern philosophy, the research suggests moving away from theoretical binarisation and exploring gradients between extreme positions (autonomous vs heteronomous, universal vs situated, real vs constructed). First of all, the article extends further the ideas of Harris and Steffensen and introduces a new thesis: ‘if you want to lose the language, study it!’. Secondly, the research demonstrates the need for the practical and aesthetical acknowledgment of the reality of language (e.g., in education). To prove the first statement, the emptiness of theoretical efforts to find the entity of language, the research brings into play the ideas of fuzzy logic and critically revises realism, conceptualism and nominalism in language studies. The work provides evidences that neither ‘language’ nor ‘dialects’ or ‘idiolects’ can be found in practice due to the inherent fuzziness of the linguistic facts (systems) ‘described’ by these clear-cut categories. It is argued that theories and concepts designed for the description of the language-related phenomena are theoretical constructions that do not fully capture the stochastic and dynamic reality of language. Instead, they merely construct or declare it, similar to how we create star constellations (Steffensen and Fill, 2014). It resonates with the idea that can be found in Zen Buddhism and Taoism: “name it and you will lose it”. The research also holds that even if ‘language’ is an “ensemble of idiolects, sociolects, dialects and so on – rather than an entity per se” (Hazan, 2015, 11), we cannot find a token of its existence in either the entity or in the elements (ensemble) constituting that hypothetical entity. The article concludes that those researchers who focus on the particular nature of language lose its complexity; conversely, those who embrace all aspects (e.g., integrational approaches) lose its entity. However, if we are not able to grasp theoretically the reality of language does it mean it has no reality whatsoever and researchers and learners cannot have any positive knowledge about the language? The article offers some analogies in favour of the reality of language (comparison with music, road traffic, star constellations) and methods for its understanding based on intuition, metaphorical thinking and aesthetic comprehension. An example of such intuitive observation can be found in Japanese culture through such aesthetic categories as shibui 渋い, wabi-sabi 侘寂 and yūgen 幽玄. As a result, the article proposes the idea of sustainable ecolinguistics that includes in the body of integrational approaches the phronesis of common-sense realism in language teaching/learning and “unscientific impressionism in language studies” (quoted from Steffensen, 2011, 204).