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‘What Can You Say, Words It Is, Nothing Else Going’

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Abstract

This essay examines the capacity of language (‘word’) to convey what there is (‘world’). It draws on philosophical thought, which it seeks to apply to law while making specific reference to comparative legal studies, that is, to the investigation of law that is foreign to its interpreter.

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Notes

  1. For a historical overview, see Geach [56].

  2. Plato [101], 154.

  3. Schleiermacher [113], 209–210.

  4. Putnam [102], 110 and 122, respectively (emphasis original).

  5. Heidegger [71], 55 (‘Der Sprache ist aufgegeben, das Seiende als solches im Werk offenbar zu machen’).

  6. Heidegger [71], 56 (‘Nur wo Sprache, da ist Welt’).

  7. Novalis [99], 672 (‘Der lächerliche Irrthum ist nur zu bewundern, daß die Leute meinen—sie sprächen um der Dinge willen. Gerade das Eigenthümliche der Sprache, daß sie sich blos um sich selbst bekümmert, weiß keiner’).

  8. Gorgias [59], § 8, 23.

  9. For a discussion of this work, see Kerferd [75], 93–100. What is known of Gorgias’s text, written in 444–441 BCE, is credited to detailed commentaries by Aristotle and Sextus Empiricus.

  10. Humboldt [124], 59–60 (my emphasis) (‘nicht bestätigt’/‘Der Mensch lebt mit den Gegenständen hauptsächlich, ja, da Empfinden und Handeln in ihm von seinen Vorstellungen abhängen, sogar ausschliesslich so, wie die Sprache sie ihm zuführt’)]. Since Humboldt had intended this text to form the introduction to a multi-volume work concerning the Kawi language on the island of Java, it is commonly known, in German at least, as the ‘Kawi-Werk’ or ‘Kawiwerk’.

  11. Humboldt [124], 59 (‘[das Wort] ist nicht ein Abdruck des Gegenstandes an sich, sondern des von diesem in der Seele erzeugten Bildes’). Cf. Wittgenstein [130], § 191, 33: ‘The words are not a translation of something else that was there before they were’ (‘Die Worte sind keine Übersetzung eines Andern, welches vor ihnen da war’). This bilingual edition features the German text facing the English translation.

  12. Rorty [110], 6.

  13. Nietzsche [93], III, § 513, 277 (‘Die Mächtigen sind es, welche die Namen der Dinge zum Gesetz gemacht haben’).

  14. Wittig [132], 12. Cf. Nietzsche [96], I, § 11, 16: ‘The sculptor of language was not so modest as to believe that he was only giving things designations, he conceived rather that with words he was expressing supreme knowledge of things’ (‘Der Sprachbildner war nicht so bescheiden, zu glauben, dass er den Dingen eben nur Bezeichnungen gebe, er drückte vielmehr, wie er wähnte, das höchste Wissen über die Dinge mit den Worten aus’).

  15. Nietzsche [94], II, § 58, 121 (emphasis original in English) (‘dass unsäglich mehr daran liegt, wie die Dinge heissen, als was sie sind’).

  16. Derrida [32], 253 (‘au monde, à la réalité, à l’être’).

  17. Haraway [64], 214 (my emphasis). Cf. Novalis [98], 558: ‘The entire language is a postulate’ (‘Die ganze Sprache ist ein Postulat’) (emphasis original).

  18. Ricoeur [106], 115 (‘L[e] porter au langage, ce n’est pas l[e] changer en autre chose, mais, en l’articulant et en l[e] développant, l[e] faire devenir [lui]-même’).

  19. Heidegger [66], 60 (‘Kein Ding ist, wo das Wort gebricht’).

  20. Humboldt [124], 60 (emphasis original in English) (‘in jeder Sprache [liegt] eine eigenthümliche Weltansicht’). But this idea can be found already in the theory of ‘point of view’ (‘Sehe-Punckt’) developed in Chladenius [15], § 308, 185. For an extensive discussion of Chladenius’s work, see Szondi [119], 14–66. More recently, the notion of ‘world-view’ has been claimed by Whorf [127], 212–213.

  21. Humboldt [124], 54 (‘[Die intellectuelle Thätigkeit] und die Sprache sind daher Eins und unzertrennlich von einander’).

  22. Lacan [77], 276 (‘C’est le monde des mots qui crée le monde des choses’). Note that the claim to the effect that meaning determines reference not only underlies the so-called ‘linguistic turn’, but also serves as a basis for the analytic tradition initiated by Frege and Russell. For example, see Searle [114].

  23. Humboldt [124], 63 (‘es [ist] die Sprache selbst, von der ich dabei Einschränkung erfahre’). Cf. Beckett [7], 319: ‘I have no language but theirs’. The re-writing from the French is Beckett’s own. For the French text, see Beckett [4], 65 (‘je n’ai que leur langage à eux’).

  24. Heidegger [70], 121 (‘Aufgehen in der Welt’).

  25. See Heidegger [70], 114–122.

  26. Heidegger [66], 124 (‘Wir sprechen nicht nur die Sprache, wir sprechen aus ihr’) (emphasis original).

  27. Heidegger [66],124 (‘Sichsagenlassen’) (emphasis omitted).

  28. Heidegger [66], 124 (‘die Sprache spricht’) (emphasis original).

  29. For this translation from Martin Heidegger’s philosophical vocabulary, see Lyon [81], 223, not. 14. The reference is to Heidegger [67], 369.

  30. Heidegger [66], 123–124 (‘das Sprechen nicht zugleich, sondern zuvor ein Hören. Dieses Hören auf die Sprache geht auch allem sonst vorkommenden Hören in der unscheinbarsten Weise vorauf’) (emphasis original).

  31. For example, see Derrida [34], 410 (‘otologie’). Rudolf Bultmann likewise advocates ‘listening to the claims of the text’: Bultmann [12], 228 (‘[den] Anspruch [des Texts] zu hören’). See also Heidegger [65], 128: ‘[W]e are compelled, as soon as we set out upon a way of thought, to give specific attention to what the word says’ (‘sobald wir uns auf einen Weg des Denkens begeben, [sind wir] schon daran gehalten, eigens auf das Sagen des Wortes zu achten’).

  32. Humboldt [122], 240 (‘Die Sprache erscheint in der Wirklichkeit nur als ein Vielfaches’). For Humboldt’s statement on inseparability, see supra, note 21. Cf. Deleuze and Guattari [20], 14: ‘[T]here is no language as such, nor a universality of language, but a concourse of dialects, of patois, of jargons, of special languages’ (‘il n’y a pas de langue en soi, ni d’universalité du langage, mais un concours de dialectes, de patois, d’argots, de langues spéciales’).

  33. For a detailed and compelling refutation of Davidson’s claim to the effect that one cannot be in a situation to judge that others hold a radically different conceptual scheme from one’s own, see Forster [49]. For Donald Davidson’s position, see Davidson [16], 183–198.

  34. Gadamer [55], 277 (‘die Idee einer absoluten Vernunft überhaupt keine Möglichkeit des geschichtlichen Menschentums. Vernunft ist für uns nur als reale geschichtliche, d. h. schlechthin: sie ist nicht ihrer selbst Herr, sondern bleibt stets auf die Gegebenheiten angewiesen, an denen sie sich betätigt’). Cf. Nietzsche [93], III, § 522, 283: ‘Rational thought is interpretation according to a scheme that we cannot throw off’ (‘Das vernünftige Denken ist ein Interpretieren nach einem Schema, welches wir nicht abwerfen können’) (emphasis omitted).

  35. See Hamann [63], 208.

  36. Cf. Humboldt, supra, note 32.

  37. Celan coined this ‘nonexistent word that resides somewhere between a “traveling man” and a “ferryman”’: Lyon [81], 40.

  38. Derrida [25], 31 (‘à la notion de traduction, il faudra substituer une notion de transformation: transformation réglée d’une langue par une autre, d’un texte par un autre’) (emphasis original).

  39. Derrida [25], 31 (‘Nous n’aurons et n’avons en fait jamais eu affaire à quelque “transport” de signifiés purs que l’instrument—ou le “véhicule”—signifiant laisserait vierge et inentamé, d’une langue à l’autre’).

  40. I adopt and adapt the notion of ‘resignification’ from the work of Judith Butler. Marshalling the inherent instability of linguistic meaning, re-signification allows for the alteration or redirection of a meaning having sedimented within a term on account of its pre-existing relationships. For example, see Butler [13], 191.

  41. Michaels [87], 43, referring to Rorty [110], 5.

  42. Heidegger [70], 140–141 (‘[Die Auslegung] gründet jeweils in einer Vorhabe. […] Die Zueignung des Verstandenen, aber noch Eingehüllten vollzieht die Enthüllung immer unter der Führung einer Hinsicht, die das fixiert, im Hinblick worauf das Verstandene ausgelegt werden soll. Die Auslegung gründet jeweils in einer Vorsicht […]. […] Wie immer—die Auslegung hat sich je schon endgültig oder vorbehaltlich für eine bestimmte Begrifflichkeit entschieden; sie gründet in einem Vorgriff’) (emphasis original).

  43. Bultmann [12], 216; Gadamer [55], 278–306 (‘Prejudices as Conditions of Understanding’) (‘Vorurteile als Bedingungen des Verstehens’). Cf. Wittgenstein [130], § 234, 43: ‘What happens is not that this symbol cannot be further interpreted, but: I do no interpreting. I do not interpret, because I feel at home in the present picture’ (‘Nicht das findet statt, daß sich dieses Symbol nicht mehr deuten läßt, sondern: ich deute nicht. Ich deute nicht, weil ich mich in dem gegenwärtigen Bild heimisch fühle’).

  44. Derrida [33], 76 (‘le lien essentiel de la pensée […] au langage […] ne fera jamais l’économie des idiomes’). Derrida further reflects on the ‘impossib[ility] to bring out a concept of essence […] that would transcend idiomatic difference’: Derrida [33], 76 (‘impossib[ilité] de dégager un concept de l’essence […] qui transcende la différence idiomatique’).

  45. Legendre [80], 75 (‘l’écran des mots’).

  46. Miller [89], 230. The dissemination of the expression ‘prisonhouse’ as applied to language owes very much to Jameson [74]. Fredric Jameson claims to borrow the words from Nietzsche, whom he quotes in English translation by way of epigraph. Though unattributed, Jameson’s translation evidently replicates Erich Heller’s, which initially appeared in 1963 in an essay entitled, ‘Wittgenstein and Nietzsche’. This text was subsequently republished as part of Heller [73]. For the relevant passage, see Heller [73], 152: ‘We have to cease to think if we refuse to do it in the prisonhouse of language’ (emphasis in English omitted). The German original is ‘sprachlichen Zwange’: Nietzsche [92], 34 (emphasis omitted). A preferable translation is in Nietzsche [93], III, § 522, 283: ‘We cease to think when we refuse to do so under the constraint of language’ (my emphasis).

  47. Acosta [18], bk IV, ch. 41, 288–289 (‘Ninguna cosa tiene el Piru de mayor riqueza y ventaja, que es el ganado de la tierra, que los nuestros llamá Carneros de las Indias: y los Indios en lengua general los llaman Llama […]. […] Son estos Carneros, o Llamas en dos especies: unos son Pacos, o Carneros lanudos: otros son rasos, y de poca lana, y son mejores para carga: son mayores que carneros grandes, y menores que bezerros: tienen el cuello muy largo a semejança de camello, y han lo menester porque como son altos, y leuantados de cuerpo, para pacer requiere tener cuello luengo’). The Jesuit José de Acosta, a Spaniard, resided in Peru and Mexico from 1570 to 1587 and initially published his book in Spanish in 1590.

  48. Cf. Nietzsche [95], 82: ‘The “thing-in-itself” […] is […] something quite incomprehensible to the creator of language and something not in the least worth striving for’ (‘Das “Ding an sich” […] ist auch dem Sprachbildner ganz unfasslich und ganz und gar nicht erstrebenswerth’).

  49. This observation is an opportunity to draw a crucial distinction. It is not that interpretation allows one to ‘grasp’ or ‘get hold of’ understanding. Interpretation is not an activity through which one can enter into possession of understanding. Rather, interpretation channels understanding and thus is constitutive of understanding such that each understanding must assume an interpretation, whether consciously or not. Through interpretation, ‘understanding appropriates what it has understood in an understanding way’: Heidegger [70], 139 (‘das Verstehen [eignet sich] sein Verstandenes verstehend zu’). For example, speaking another langage than one’s ‘own’ always involves translation, no matter how well one speaks it and no matter, therefore, how sub-consciously this process operates. Indeed, this is the case within one’s ‘own’ language also, for example when a XXIst-century reader considers a XVIth-century text. Although one tacitly apprehends the XVIth-century ‘rose’ as a XXIst-century ‘rose’ and thus fails to detect the ways in which ‘the’ text has changed on account of the ‘foreignness’ that temporality has introduced into it, the reader’s blindness does not detract from the fact that a process of translation is effectively taking place.

  50. Gadamer [55], 270 (‘Es gibt hier keine andere “Objektivität” als die Bewährung, die eine Vormeinung durch ihre Ausarbeitung findet’).

  51. Cf. Nietzsche [97], I, § 15, 5: ‘Never did one neighbour understand the other’ (‘Nie verstand ein Nachbar den andern’).

  52. Gadamer [55], 295 (‘Die Vorurteile und Vormeinungen, die das Bewußtsein des Interpreten besetzt halten, sind ihm als solche nicht zu freier Verfügung’).

  53. Gadamer [55], 278 (‘die Vorurteile des einzelnen [sind] weit mehr als seine Urteile die geschichtliche Wirklichkeit seines Seins’) (emphasis omitted).

  54. Gadamer [55], 278 (‘In Wahrheit gehört die Geschichte nicht uns, sondern wir gehören ihr’). Cf. Wittgenstein [131], § 94, 15: ‘But I did not get my picture of the world by satisfying myself of its correctness; nor do I have it because I am satisfied of its correctness. No: it is the inherited background against which I distinguish between true and false’ (‘Aber mein Weltbild habe ich nicht, weil ich mich von seiner Richtigkeit überzeugt habe; auch nicht weil ich von seiner Richtigkeit überzeugt bin. Sondern es ist der überkommene Hintergrund, auf welchem ich zwischen wahr und falsch unterscheide’). This bilingual edition features the German text facing the English translation.

  55. Gadamer [55], 459 [‘insoweit ist es buchstäblich richtiger zu sagen, daß die Sprache uns spricht, als daß wir sie sprechen’]. Cf. Derrida [43], 38: ‘One does not do whatever one wants with language’ (‘On ne fait pas n’importe quoi avec la langue’).

  56. Derrida [43], 39 (‘une langue, ça n’appartient pas’). Cf. Beckett, supra, note 23.

  57. Deleuze and Guattari [20], 14 (‘Il n’y a pas de langue-mère, mais prise de pouvoir par une langue dominante dans une multiplicité politique’).

  58. Mallarmé [86], 138 [‘Toute comparaison est, préalablement, défectueuse’]. This text appeared on the occasion of Tennyson’s death.

  59. See Heidegger [70], 203–204.

  60. See Hamann [63], 211.

  61. Gadamer [55], 291 (‘Das Verstehen ist selber nicht so sehr als eine Handlung der Subjektivität zu denken, sondern als Einrücken in ein Überlieferungsgeschehen, in dem sich Vergangenheit und Gegenwart beständig vermitteln’) (emphasis omitted).

  62. Gadamer [55], 299 (‘Verstehen ist seinem Wesen nach ein wirkunsgeschichtlicher Vorgang’) (emphasis omitted).

  63. Gadamer [55], 300 (‘daß man sich selber richtiger verstehen lerne und anerkenne, daß in allem Verstehen, ob man sich dessen ausdrücklich bewußt ist oder nicht, die Wirkung dieser Wirkungsgeschichte am Werke ist’).

  64. Wachterhauser [125], 66.

  65. Heidegger [70], 4 (‘wir bewegen uns immer schon in einem Seinsverständnis’).

  66. Heidegger [72], 41 (‘Was immer und wie immer wir zu denken versuchen, wir denken im Spielraum der Überlieferung’).

  67. For a ‘positive concept of prejudice’, see Gadamer [51], 9 (‘einen positiven Begriff des Vorurteils’).

  68. Warnke [126], 92. This argument does not exclude the possibility that one can develop an idiosyncratic view of art or of the novel. Indeed, I readily admit that there can be a basic ability to deviate from an ingrained cognitive pattern in ways that are creative. Cf. Everdell [48], where the author, focusing on the period from 1899 to 1913, illustrates the emergence of notions like multi-perspectivism and ontological discontinuity through narratives devoted to individuals who, although socialized into a particular constellation of ideas, became able to think in a different way than the one presented to them. Examples of persons offering what Everdell regards as disjunctive thought include Freud, Husserl, Strindberg, Kandinsky, Bohr, and dozens of other such luminaries. Adde: Rorty [110], 50: ‘[Human beings can] manipulate the tensions within their own epoch in order to produce the beginnings of the next epoch’. This, however, is ‘[t]he most they can do’.

  69. Searle [115], 120, 120, 126, and 126, respectively. Cf. Wittgenstein [130], § 716, 123–124: ‘What about these two sentences: “This sheet is red” and “this sheet is the colour called ‘red’ in English”? Do they both say the same?’ (‘Wie ist es mit den beiden Sätzen: “dieses Blatt ist rot” und “dieses Blatt hat die Farbe, die auf Deutsch ‘rot’ heißt”? Sagen beide dasselbe?’) (emphasis original).

  70. Indeed, Martin Heidegger acknowledges that ‘even the ontological investigation that [he] is [then] conducting is determined by its historical situation’: Heidegger [69], 22 (‘die ontologische Untersuchung, die wir jetzt vollziehen, ist durch ihre geschichtliche Lage bestimmt’).

  71. Contra: Apel [1], 81: ‘[T]he notion of a serious argumentative discourse implies the regulative idea of a universal consensus to be reached about all controversial validity-claims, as for example, those involving meaning, truth and even the rightness of norms’ (emphasis original). Along converging lines, see Habermas [62], 282: ‘The law of a concrete legal community must, if it is to be legitimate, at least be compatible with moral standards that claim universal validity beyond the legal community’ (‘Das […] Recht einer konkreten Rechtsgemeinschaft muß, wenn es legitim sein soll, mindestens in Einklang stehen mit moralischen Grundsätzen, die auch über die Rechtsgemeinschaft hinaus allgemeine Geltung beanspruchen’).

  72. Rorty [111], 40.

  73. See Haraway [64], 173, who equates the ‘dream of a common language’ with that of ‘a perfectly true language’.

  74. Michaels [87], 61.

  75. Michaels [87], 45–46, referring to Rorty [110], 5.

  76. Gadamer [55], 447 (my emphasis) (‘Was Gegenstand der Erkenntnis und der Aussage ist, ist vielmehr immer schon von dem Welthorizont der Sprache umschlossen’).

  77. Mallarmé, supra, note 58.

  78. Humboldt [124], 60 (‘Nur weil man in eine fremde Sprache immer, mehr oder weniger, seine eigne Welt-, ja seine eigne Sprachansicht hinüberträgt, so wird dieser Erfolg nicht rein und vollständig empfunden’).

  79. Sedaris [117], 188 (emphasis original). I am grateful to Professor Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos for generously taking the time to contribute this quotation. Cf. Humboldt [121], 621: ‘Every language places definite boundaries upon the spirit of those who speak it, and insofar as it provides a determinate orientation, excludes others’ (‘Jede Sprache setzt dem Geiste derjenigen, welche sie sprechen, gewisse Gränzen, schliesst, insofern sie eine gewisse Richtung giebt, andre aus’).

  80. Rodriguez-Fornells, De Diego Balaguer, and Münte [108], 139.

  81. Montesquieu [90], LIX, 218 [‘si les triangles faisoient un Dieu, ils lui donneroient trois côtés’].

  82. Gadamer [55], 296 (‘Es genügt zu sagen, daß man anders versteht, wenn man überhaupt versteht’) (emphasis original). Cf. Humboldt [124], 63: ‘All understanding is always at the same time a not-understanding’ (‘Alles Verstehen ist daher immer zugleich ein Nicht-Verstehen’).

  83. Beckett [8], 455. The re-writing from the French is Beckett’s own. For a compelling expression of the idea that portrayal is betrayal, see Ortega y Gasset [100], 493.

  84. Arendt [2], 42 (‘Dadurch, dass der Gegenstand, der für das tragende Präsentieren von Dingen da ist, sowohl Tisch wie “table” heissen kann, ist angedeutet, dass uns etwas vom wahren Wesen des von uns selbst Hergestellten und Benannten entgeht’). Cf. Woolf [133], 81: ‘Nothing should be named lest by so doing we change it’.

  85. Borges [11], 136 (‘Locke, en el siglo XVII, postuló (y reprobó) un idioma imposible en el que cada cosa individual, cada piedra, cada pájaro y cada rama tuviera un nombre propio; Funes proyectó alguna vez un idioma análogo, pero lo desechó por parecerle demasiado general, demasiado ambiguo. […] Lo disuadieron dos consideraciones: la conciencia de que la tarea era interminable, la conciencia de que era inútil. […] No sólo le costaba comprender que el símbolo genérico perro abarcara tantos individuos dispares de diversos tamaños y diversa forma; le molestaba que el perro de las tres y carorce (visto de perfil) tuviera el mismo nombre que el perro de las tres y cuarto (visto de frente)’) (emphasis original in Spanish).

  86. Quine [104], 48. See also Quine [105], 22: ‘[M]eaning determines reference within each fixed ontology’; Quine [103], 53: ‘[T]erms and reference are local to our conceptual scheme’.

  87. Searle [116], 22. Cf. Dummett [46], 92: ‘We do not create the world; we must accept whatever it presents to us’. Indeed, ‘we have no control over what we find it to be like’: Dummett [46], 92.

  88. Winch [128], 12.

  89. Derrida [32], 267 (‘conflits de force’).

  90. For this argument, see Michaels [87], 19–81.

  91. I borrow the neologism ‘differend’ from the English translation of Lyotard [82]—the relevant French word being ‘différend’. See Lyotard [83].

  92. See Derrida [32], 273. For an exploration of Derrida’s thought with specific reference to language and translation, see Davis [17], 10–19.

  93. Michaels [87], 120.

  94. Michaels [87], 120.

  95. Derrida [35], 69, 45, and 45, respectively (‘la structure coloniale de toute culture’/’terreur’/’douce, discrète ou criante’].

  96. Caputo [14], 264.

  97. I refer to the definition of ‘meaning’ propounded by Wittgenstein who, in this regard, claims that ‘what the explanation of meaning is […] will be the meaning’: Wittgenstein [129], 1.

  98. MacDowell [84], 11 and 14, respectively.

  99. Rorty [109], 348–349 (emphasis original).

  100. Derrida [35], 43 (‘impossibilité absolue de métalangage’/‘Impossibilité d’un métalangage absolu’). There is ‘[n]o historical metalanguage [that can] bear witness in the transparent element of some absolute knowledge’: Derrida [39], 57 (‘Nul métalangage historique pour en témoigner dans l’élément transparent de quelque savoir absolu’). Like Derrida, ‘I do not cease to decapitate metalanguage or rather to plunge its head back into the text’: Derrida [26], 132 (‘je ne cesse de décapiter le méta-langage ou plutôt de lui replonger la tête dans le texte’).

  101. The word ‘abyss’ (‘Abgrund’) appears in Celan’s correspondence with specific reference to the separation between languages: Lyon [81], 37.

  102. Derrida [44], 241 (‘les mots “deux”, “two”, “zwei” […] restent liés à une langue’) (emphasis original). This text is the transcript of the last course of lectures that Derrida delivered at the Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris in 2002–2003.

  103. Derrida [42], 26 (‘Ce qui me guide, c’est toujours l’intraductibilité’). See also Derrida [37], 247: ‘[M]y here-now is absolutely untranslatable and […] the world in which I speak is absolutely heterogeneous. It has nothing in common with that of anyone, here. What I feel within me, what I live within me, the way in which words come to my mind, all of that is absolutely incommensurable. With the multiplicity of those who receive it, understand it each more or less in their own way and each from a here infinitely different from my here, there is no common space; this distance between his here and mine is infinite […]. Between two “here”, there is a properly infinite irreducibility, an infinite heterogeneity’ (‘mon ici-maintenant est absolument intraduisible et […] le monde dans lequel je parle est absolument hétérogène. Il n'a rien de commun avec celui de chacun, ici. Ce que je sens en moi, ce que je vis en moi, la manière dont les mots me viennent à l'esprit, tout cela est absolument incommensurable. Avec la multiplicité de ceux qui le reçoivent, le comprennent plus ou moins chacun à sa manière et chacun depuis un ici infiniment différent de mon ici, il n'y a pas d'espace commun; cette distance entre son ici et le mien est infinie […]. Entre deux “ici”, il y a une irréductibilité proprement infinie, une infinie hétérogénéité’).

  104. Derrida [36], 209. Cf. Humboldt [123], 130, who makes the point that languages ‘[n]ecessarily feature differences’ (‘Es muss nothwendig Verschiedenheiten darbieten’). Adde: Morris [91], xiii, for whom translation is ‘a practice producing difference out of incommensurability (rather than equivalence out of difference)’.

  105. MacIntyre [85], 350.

  106. Bultmann [12], 221.

  107. See generally Glanert and Legrand [58], 513–532.

  108. Derrida [45], 31 (‘entre mon monde et tout autre monde, il y a d’abord l’espace et le temps d’une différence infinie, d’une interruption incommensurable à toutes les tentatives de passage, de pont, d’isthme, de communication, de traduction, de trope et de transfert que le désir de monde ou le mal de monde […] tentera de poser, d’imposer, de proposer, de stabiliser. Il n’y a pas de monde, il n’y a que des îles’). See also Derrida [45], 31: ‘[N]either animals of different species nor human beings of different cultures nor any animal or human individual live in the same world as another, no matter how close and how similar these living individuals are (whether human or animal), and the difference between one world and the other will always remain unsurpassable’ (‘ni les animaux d’espèce différente, ni les hommes de culture différente, ni aucun individu animal ou humain n’habitent le même monde qu’un autre, si proches et si semblables ces individus vivants soient-ils (humains ou animaux), et la différence d’un monde à l’autre restera toujours infranchissable’]. If you will, though one’s existential way of being-in-the-world is of being-with-others, one cannot (knowingly) be ad idem with these others.

  109. Beckett [6], 539. Having addressed incommunicability, Pierre Klossowski enters one crucial reservation as he observes the possibility of communication through ‘the exchange of bodies through the secret language of corporeal signs’: Klossowski [76], 61 (‘l’échange des corps par le langage secret des signes corporels’) (emphasis in French omitted).

  110. Heidegger [66], 134 (‘die Sprache ist Monolog’) (emphasis original).

  111. For the view that ‘[s]eriously to study another way of life is necessarily to seek to extend our own—not simply to bring the other way within the already existing boundaries of our own’, see Winch [128], 33 (my emphasis).

  112. Sperber [118], 58. This formulation reminds one of Bhabha [9], 31: ‘[T]he Other text is forever the exegetical horizon of difference, never the active agent of articulation’.

  113. Thomas [120], 235.

  114. Young [134], 354–355 (my emphasis).

  115. Bialystok and Hakuta [10], 16. A fascinating study on the limits of acculturation is Lantolf [78], 28–46. See generally Ellis [47], 299–345.

  116. Derrida [28], 85. Cf. Legendre [79], 183: ‘[D]ogmatic systems as such do not dialogue, […] they can only negotiate’ (‘les systèmes dogmatiques comme tels ne dialoguent pas, […] ils ne peuvent que négocier’) (emphasis omitted). Adde: Novalis [99], 672: ‘[A]uthentic dialogue is naked word-play’ (‘das rechte Gespräch ist ein bloßes Wortspiel’).

  117. Beckett [5], 277.

  118. It is no doubt such features that have allowed Derrida to praise hermeneutics as a form of deconstruction. See Derrida [24], 162–163.

  119. Michelfelder and Palmer [88], 2. See also Derrida, supra, note 55.

  120. Gadamer [55], 13 (‘Im Fremden das Eigene zu erkennen’/’(im Fremden) heimisch zu werden, ist die Grundbewegung des Geistes’).

  121. Derrida [28], 82 (‘Ce n'est pas l'ignorance, ni l'obscurantisme, ni la démission devant aucun désir d'intelligibilité; mais il faut qu'à un moment donné l'autre reste comme autre’).

  122. Barthes [3], 285 (‘non-vouloir-saisir’/‘Je me jette sur mon lit, je rumine et je décide: dorénavant, de l’autre, ne plus rien vouloir saisir’) (emphasis original).

  123. Derrida [28], 82 (‘qui comprend l’autre comme autre dans un certain rapport d’incompréhension’).

  124. Grondin [61], 103 (‘la volonté de comprendre [contraint] l’autre à se plier, à se conformer aux schèmes de pensée que je lui impose et qui passent, par le fait même, à côté de sa spécificité’) (emphasis original).

  125. Derrida [29], 50 (‘totalisation interprétative’). In 1986, in a note added to Truth and Method, Gadamer showed sensitivity to this argument: Gadamer [55], 376, not. 46. Jean Grondin, a close disciple of Gadamer, discerns here the possible influence of Derrida: Grondin [61], 104–105.

  126. Derrida [31], 53.

  127. Derrida [40], 21 (‘la condition de la compréhension’).

  128. Derrida [23], 427 (‘absolument inconciliables’).

  129. Gadamer [53], 106.

  130. Gadamer’s acknowledgment of a Hegelian influence on his thought is apparent throughout his work. For example, see Gadamer [52], 312, where he refers to the distinctly Hegelian notion of ‘Aufhebung’. This reference is lost in the English translation: Gadamer [55], 306. For Hegel’s contribution to hermeneutics, see Forster [50], 174–203.

  131. See generally Grondin [60], 401–418; Rosen [112], 207–218.

  132. Derrida, supra, note 108.

  133. Derrida [21], 106 (‘l’équivocité est en fait toujours irréductible’/‘les mots et le langage en général ne sont et ne peuvent jamais être des objets absolus’) (emphasis original).

  134. Derrida [34], 246 (‘nous ne pouvons—ni ne devons—exclure, quand quelqu’un parle, en privé ou en public, quand il enseigne, publie, prêche, ordonne, promet ou prophétise, informe ou communique, que quelque force en lui s’efforce aussi de ne pas être compris, approuvé, accepté dans le consensus’) (emphasis original).

  135. Gadamer [54], 41 (‘Das Befremdende, das einen Text unverständlich macht, soll durch den Interpreten aufgehoben werden’).

  136. Gadamer [55], 213 (‘am Ende [gelingt] immer wieder das Verstehen’).

  137. Ricoeur [107], 368 (‘La chose du texte’/‘ce que l’agencement formel du texte médiatise’) (emphasis original). Gadamer refers to ‘the meaning of the text’ as ‘the thing itself’: Gadamer [55], 461 (‘der Sinn des Textes’/‘die Sache selbst’).

  138. Gadamer [55], 461 (‘etwas fernzuhalten […], sobald es von dem Sinn des Textes selbst verweigert wird’).

  139. Derrida [22], 227 (‘[la lecture] ne peut légitimement transgresser le texte vers autre chose que lui’).

  140. Derrida [41], 198 (‘comme tel’/‘tel qu’en lui-même’).

  141. Derrida [22], 227 (‘produire’/‘structure signifiante’/‘toujours viser un certain rapport, inaperçu de l’écrivain, entre ce qu’il commande et ce qu’il ne commande pas des schémas de la langue dont il fait usage’) (emphasis original).

  142. Cf. Heidegger [68], 181: ‘Yet we must guard against the presumption that we now belong among those who really understand. Perhaps we too are mere onlookers’ (‘Doch hüten wir uns zu meinen, wir seien damit schon Verstehende; vielleicht schauen wir nur zu’).

  143. Derrida [31], 54.

  144. Derrida [27], 67 (‘une polytonalité immaîtrisable, avec greffes, intrusions, parasitages’).

  145. Derrida [32], 122 (‘Mille possibilités resteront toujours ouvertes, alors même qu’on comprend quelque chose de cette phrase qui fait sens’).

  146. This neologism is a leitmotiv in the work of Derrida. It wishes to convey the idea, intrinsically aporetic, according to which a meaning, although destined for an addressee, is liable to err—which means, for instance, that it may, in the event, travel from the addressee to the addressor (as when the addressee ascribes his meaning to the addressor’s utterance).

  147. Derrida [27], 67–68 (‘la possibilité pour l’autre ton ou le ton d’un autre, de venir à n’importe quel moment interrompre une musique familière’). Cf. Derrida [43], 54: ‘[D]econstruction is on the side of the yes, of the affirmation of life’ (‘la déconstruction est du côté du oui, de l’affirmation de la vie’) (emphasis original).

  148. Derrida [30], 38 (‘plus d’une langue’) (emphasis original). The idea of ‘deterritorialization’ occurs frequently in the work of Deleuze. For example, see Deleuze and Guattari [19]; Deleuze and Guattari [20].

  149. Derrida [38], 218 (‘veiller à l'altérité de l’autre’).

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I borrow my title, which I have formatted to fit this text, from an answer Samuel Beckett gave his interviewer, Niklaus Gessner. For the transcript, revealing that Beckett spoke in French, see Gessner [57], 75:‘Que voulez-vous, Monsieur, c’est les mots, on n’a rien d’autre’. Throughout, translations are mine unless attributed.

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Legrand, P. ‘What Can You Say, Words It Is, Nothing Else Going’. Int J Semiot Law 26, 805–832 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-013-9308-y

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