Transformation and communication research strategies: language-society-culture

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T. Shevchenko national university of Kyiv,

УДК 008/16 DOI: 10.15421/171747

Transformation and communication research strategies: language - society - culture Forkosh, S.M., 2017. Transformation and communication research strategies: language - society - culture. Scientific and theoretical almanac «Grani» 20; 3(143), 93-97. doi: 10.15421/171747 (in English).

S.M. Forkosh

Kyiv, Ukraine

Introduction

Formulation of the problem. Understanding the connection of language, society and culture in philosophy creates a set of problems. Its solution is the basis of the unconventional understanding of social relations. Each problem has its «face» in the frames of the appropriate disciplinary research. At the same time, the potential of disciplinary methodological tools is limited by the scope of the study, and procedures of its transition to other areas are not grounded enough. Therefore there is a need for the interdisciplinary communication.

In different areas of the activity, the researcher meets stable communicative trend (linguistic, cultural, and methodological). In philosophy the intend to understand the importance of the language philosophy and in analytic philosophy - the understand the contemporary society and culture stands behind the desire to analyze the nature of communication trends. This analysis requires adequate tools, designs and models. If compared language, culture and society, the sharpest lines of research situations are in culture.

Generally, based on the characteristics of the modern culture (rapidity of development, lack of self-awareness and «maturation» vector, non-manifestation of methodological tools), sociological and linguistic sciences become to be a model in the humanitarian area. Phenomenological knowledge is growing rapidly in sociology and its formation is accompanied with the use of methodologically proven elements. At the same time, awareness of the structural maturation of such knowledge is low.

Faced with philosophy, linguistics analyzes the text in terms of the theory of knowledge and its hermeneutics, e.g. interpretive practices. But if philosophers are focused on the objective understanding of reality, the linguists are limited by the hermeneutic circle. The researchers emphasize that the hermeneutic circle which characterizes the understanding (or rather, the impossibility of the understanding's reduction and interpretation of the text to a coherent algorithm) belongs to the very structure of meaning in «sciences of human spirit», where the interpreter deals with not idealized or model thinking as in the science of nature.

Not only the procedure of mutual understanding between people, but also the general process of understanding is presented as language event, even when we are talking about the outer linguistic phenomena or there is the language event in silent and carved in letters voice. It occurs in the inner dialogue of the soul with itself, during which the nature of thinking is being clarified.

Analysis of studies and publications. The essence of dialogue in all its modifications is implemented during the communication process, N. Luhmann said: «human relations, and social life is impossible without communication» [1, p. 43], that «only communication can maintain communication» [2, p. 114], based on the fact that only communication mechanism fulfill the function of communication, broadcasting the information.

One of the most famous researchers of communication problems is Karl-A. Apel. Philosophical ideas of K.-A. Apel on the nature of communication are aimed primarily on the context of the new civilization conditions of contemporary communicative community and on the search of opportunities of saving of such sustainable forms of human behavior's internal regulation as morality.

Focusing on the linguistic-conventional character of the human behavior, K.-A. Apel defines the inter-subjective communication as the verbal communication, which is studied by him from the perspective of linguistic practices, used for language games.

Apel created his own philosophy of language with the help of the use of transcendentalism methodology and on the basis of the critical analysis of his predecessors' achievements. This philosophy allows better understanding of society, history and discourse ethics. Some positions of Apel's philosophical concept are investigated within the general context of problems and ideas of the Frankfurt School's critical theory. This is reasonable and is certified by the similar views of Apel's most significant points to the concept by Jurgen Habermas, and the polemic between two thinkers. However, Apel's concept differs from Habermas' position in the final attitude: Apel describes his position as «only» philosophical and thus just as classical academic philosophical position. He clearly and fundamentally separates philosophy from politics and social thought and supposes the possible influence of philosophy or science on the socio-political sphere only when it contributes to the sphere of education, in conditions, when the state does not restrict the rights and opportunities of the democratically organized universe. Philosophy and science should focus their efforts on the destruction of not reflective, dogmatic prejudices and should not just rely on the authority of the «great philosophers». Apel deliberately separated this critical potential of philosophical and scientific thinking from the social activity, he separated himself from political movements and goals. Not science is the theory of philosophy, but rather the philosophy is the theory of science [3, p. 77]. That is why, attention to the status of philosophy is crucial for Apel.

The aim of the study. On the basis of transcendental pragmatics by K.-A. Apel, it is possible to describe criteria or common principles, which would allow not only combining the basic research strategies, but also covering multiple manifestations of socio-dynamics.

Presentation of the main material

K-A. Apel's philosophical concept is actual nowadays as it develops opportunities of the philosophical tradition of transcendentalism by turning towards the field of language. This leads to the solipsism's overcoming and transition from solitary Cartesian I to inter-subjectivity, created by the communicative community.

Apel suggested the program of philosophy's transformation. According to it, the upgrade of traditional philosophy's grounds and the concept of rationality and sense of philosophizing was supposed. This is implemented in transformation of the tradition of transcendental philosophy in Kant's version. The starting point for Apel was the idea of transcendentalism by itself, that is the reflection of the conditions of possibility of sciences and it forms the main task of philosophy.

As we are talking here about the terms of the opportunity not just of the language, but of the verbal behavior (actions), so far Apel himself calls it «transcendental pragmatics».

The name «transcendental pragmatics» means that the problem of the inter-subjectivity is solved on the basis of transcendental questions setting, through their reconstruction. So, in the methodological aspect arises the task of the linguistic and pragmatic transformation of the transcendental question setting with the help of the theory of speech action. This means that along with empirical pragmatics, which aims to comprehend the true- typical speech acts under certain conditions, which can be studied from a sociological, ethnological and psychological position, «transcendental pragmatics» is aimed at the creation of «a system of rules, on which the ability of subject to express sentences in this or that situation is grounded»[4].

Apel aims to clarify the essential prerequisites of the transcendental-hermeneutic concept of language and, therefore, to transform the transcendental philosophy, which is oriented on the language. Analyzing the specific of the language's nature understanding in the history of philosophy, Apel distinguishes two approaches to language. The first «paradigm» (which comes from antiquity) suggests that the process of thinking is happening without language, and the results of the cognitive process are embodied in the form of language in order to transfer them to others. Here the language is given as the auxiliary function to the thinking, it performs tagging and message functions. Another «paradigm» (Wittgenstein's) proceeds from the base of the identity of language structures and world structures and considers communication to be a «private coding» (speaker) and «private decoding» (listener) of messages about the state of things. This happens due to the fact that they can be presented within a priori identical for all language structure. Both these approaches have typical understanding of thinking in isolation from the language. Both approaches don't understand the communication as a prerequisite for the possibility of reflective thinking in the form of «internal conversation». Apel criticizes both approaches, indicating an alternative way of transformation of the transcendental philosophy in line with the philosophy of language. The result of this transformation should become the rethinking of nature of the conceptual thinking, meaningful learning and meaningful action from the philosophy position.

In transcendental pragmatics the language is studied in three aspects: as a condition of the possibility of science, empirical and theoretical science about language, and, finally, the transcendental philosophy by itself. It has been emphasized by Apel that both theoretical and practical philosophy can be mediated by the philosophical analysis of language use.

With the help of new understanding of language, it is possible to create a modern philosophy that would be able to give an adequate response to the contemporary challenges. Apel's first step in this direction was to rethink the trinity denotation construction «sign-object- interpreter». In behaviorists' pragmatics, attention was focused on the study of dual relationship «sign-object», despite the interpreter. Apel believes that the interpreter was perceived seriously, if he was taken into account as interpretation subject by other subjects of interpretation, members of the same interpretative process. In other words, the three-parts relationship «sign-object-interpreter» will become clear only in conditions of at least imaginary participation of the another entity of interpretation.

Thus Apel introduces an additional member in the structure of the semiotic triangle «object - mark - inter- preter» complementing it with another subject, which is in communicative relations with the first subject. This means the constitution of relationships that are called «the communicative community» by Apel. He comes from the notion of language in the unity of syntactic, semantic and pragmatic components. communicative translation language apel

Important points of Apel's concept are his ideas on two kinds of communicative community: real and ideal communicative community. Real community is something, where the individual is in the process of socialization. The ideal communicative community is an imaginary construct of such community, where the content of any argument could be adequately understood and its correctness could be determined.

Apel believes that rational inter-mediation of survival imperatives in the real society and imperatives of the ideal communication community, that represents a vector of progress in social development, is absolutely necessary. A smart politician by Apel should behave under the circumstances, in this case the focus should be on the strategic behavior, but at the same time his task is to change the circumstances which would create the material conditions for further actions in accordance with the principles of an ideal communication community. Thus, the historical process by Apel is a process of convergence of real and ideal communication communities.

Functionally differentiated concept of language, achievements of classical semiotics in conjunction with the principles of inter and transcendental reflection, allows building the «bridge» from semiotics to ethics, as the field of tension between the real and the ideal communicative community can be understood as a field of tension between existent and appropriate. In terms of the ideal communicative community all rules of communication ethics are fulfilled. They act as the perfect communication a priori. Historically created life forms of the real community appear as actual communication a priori. If we think that exists only situational understanding, in this case we should talk about the different possibilities. This means that criteria, which allows distinguishing understanding from misunderstanding, are absent. The correlation of the real community of members of communication with an ideal communicative community removes this contradiction in the process of argumentation.

Specifics of Apel's approach is the answer to the question about the conditions of knowledge ability, which is connected with issues in the constitution of the objectivity during the process of learning, on the one hand, and issues of consciousness and inter-subjective importance of the results of learning, on the other. In this case we can talk about the attempt of synthesis of classical transcendental philosophy and philosophy of the language.

Fundamental grounds of classical transcendentalism have been reviewed by Apel in order to implement this synthesis. Kant wanted to answer the question about the conditions of ability of knowledge, and abstracting from the language and communication, he did not ask the question about inter-subjective importance of language judgments, and even more about the constitution of the objectivity in language. In transcendental pragmatics, the existence of pragmatic obviousness of transcendental language argumentation game is indicated. One of such obviousness, in addition to the existence of the cogitative

I, is the existence of the practice of speech communication, real communication community and the real world outside the consciousness. Semiotic structure of the language game of argumentation presumes the existence of the real world.

Agreeing with Wittgenstein about the impossibility of a private language, Apel, however, rejects his idea of pluralism of language games. Firstly, he argues that person easily can switch from one language to another, and then points out that the Wittgenstein's methodological apparatus is not sufficient enough to include it correctly into the theory of the process of language games' imitation, revival and assimilation of the past in contemporary life forms. Apel solves this problem, introducing the concept of transcendental language game, which is the basis of a particular language games and creates conditions for its mediation.

According to Apel, «Transcendental language game» can be seen, on the one hand, as a limit precondition of the analytical philosophy of language and criticism of metaphysics and, on the other hand, it can be the basis for the transformation of the classical transcendental philosophy to the philosophy of language. From the side of regulatory concept of «transcendental language game and associated with it unlimited communication community, it is possible to solve the important problem of transcendental language philosophy on the essence that appears from the plurality of competing «language games» and brings the essence of things to the use of words.

The answer to the question on the essence should be expected not from the description of the use of words, but from the consensus of all virtual participants of the language game on the ideal rules of such use of words. But, all possible ways of achieving consensus on rules of words use are prescribed beforehand due the distinction between syntactic and semantic systems, aren't they? Apel refers to the history of human understanding. Despite the existing today, just as millennium ago, differences in language games, we can talk about the increasing communicative unity of mankind, mostly due to the language game of science. Of course, science and technology have complicated the human culture and social structure greatly, as well as the human icon of the world.

Though it is ridiculous to expect the achievement of a synthesis of different approaches on language understanding in the plane of linguistic competence, but in the plane of the communicative competence we can expect the verbal understanding between those, belonging to different linguistic communities. During this, the comparison of «inner form» (syntactic and semantic structure) of different languages can be used for semantic and pragmatic understanding, which transcends frames of separate languages.

By Apel, the result of the hermeneutic transformation of transcendental philosophy is the reduction of a fundamental difference between theoretical and practical philosophy.

This removal leads to the situation, when the place of «minds acts» (Kant) that ensure the objectivity and inter-subjectivity of knowledge is occupied by «speech acts» that embody specific acts of understanding in the communicative community of scientists.

On this ground the following conclusion is made by Apel that «the transcendental-hermeneutic reflection on conditions of possibility of speech understanding in infinite communicative community creates the foundation of prima phi- losophe's unity being the unity of theoretical and practical mind» [5, p. 261-262]. Among the views of K.-A. Apel, a special place is occupied by the constructive attitude to the potential of the theory of «language games» by L. Wittgenstein. Researcher not only used the methodological possibilities of this theory, but also consciously made a paradigm broadcast of methodological tools. Thus, methodological tools that have emerged during the study of language, implemented the heuristic potential in researches of the community.

Conclusions

The connection between language and society, science and culture forms the basis for the creation of innovative methodological scheme, its heuristic potential can be verified in the field of research of culture.

Within researches in the field of culture, the new qualitative situation that can be described as a methodological communication, is created. It is formed by researchers of cultural processes (current) and researchers of linguistic phenomena (potentially).

Depending on how organized and constructive the dialogue between culture expert and linguist is, so productive the formation of methodological tools for the field study will be.

References

1. Luman, N., 2000. Neverojatnost'kommunikacii [Incredibility of communication]. /http://www.soc.pu.ru:8101/publications/pts / luman_c.html (in Russian)

2. Luman, N., 1995. Chto takoe kommunikacija [What is communication]. Sociologicheskij zhurnal 3. 114--125 (in Russian)

3. Apel', K.-O., 1997 Transcendental'no-germenevticheskoe ponjatie jazyka [Transcendental-hermeneutic notion of language]. Voprosy filosofii 1. 76-92 (in Russian)

4. Apel', Karl-Otto, 1999. Dyskursyvna etyka yak politychna etyka vidpovidal'nosti u sytuatsiyi suchasnoho svitu [Discourse ethics as a political ethic of responsibility in the situation of the modern world]. 395-412 (in Ukrainian)

5. Apel', K.-O, 2001. Transformacija filosofii [Transformation of philosophy]. M.: Logos. 339. (in Russian)

Бібліографічні посилання

1. Луман Н. Невероятность коммуникации /http://www.soc.pu.ru:8101/publications/pts /luman_c.html

2. Луман Н. Что такое коммуникация // Социологический журнал, 1995. - № 3. -- С. 114--125

3. Апель К.-О. Трансцендентально-герменевтическое понятие языка // Вопросы философии, 1997. - № 1. - С. 76-92

4. Апель, Карл-Отто. Дискурсивна етика як політична етика відповідальності у ситуації сучасного світу / К. О. Апель. - 1999. С. 395-412

5. Апель, К.-О. Трансформация философии / Пер. с нем. В. Куренного, Б. Скуратова. -- М.: Логос, 2001. -- 339 с.

Annotation

УДК 008/16 doi: 10.15421/171747

Transformation and communication research strategies: language - society - culture. S.M. Forkosh, sergey.forkosh@gmail.com T. Shevchenko national university of Kyiv, 60, Volodymyrska St., Kyiv, 01033, Ukraine

Main research strategies in the humanitarian sphere, connected with the transformation-communicative approach by K.-O. Apel, have been studied in the article. This approach is based on I. Kant's classic transcendental method, but has much wider sphere of application. Syncretic tendencies in humanitarian sciences cause the search of criteria or generalizing principles, which would allow not only combining basic research strategies, but also covering variable forms of the social-dynamics. Language in its various forms becomes the common ground, where it is possible not only to describe, but to explain disparate elements of the society's functioning.

These elements, when developed, cause the formation of culture. The basis for the analysis of the interdisciplinary communication features are relevant branches of philosophy. Specific realities of the research activity are understood by the methodologist as the deep interrelation of language tools and specific features of scientific knowledge's changes. In fact, the researcher simultaneously performs double task: interprets scientific texts, improves his/her understanding of their structural characteristics, and also studies social, cultural, humanistic priorities of the available practices.

Based on the characteristics of the modern culture (rapidity of development, lack of self-awareness and «maturation» vector, nonmanifestation of methodological tools), sociological and linguistic sciences become to be a model in the humanitarian area. At the same time, awareness of the structural maturation of such knowledge is low. The development of linguistic sciences has more advanced conceptual design and it resonates with the evolution of the language philosophy. That's why, considering the socio-cultural transformations of the globalization era, grounds of clarification of the specific methodological potential, which are accumulated in the contemporary linguistics, should be considered. In this situation, some hopes are connected with the peculiarities of thinking in the technology sphere. However, the methodological component in the technological mindset is still in the embryonic condition.

Therefore, pragmatic vectors should be found in the methodological consciousness of human knowledge. Summarizing, it can be said that transcendental-communicative approach allows identifying the connection between language and society, science and culture; establishing innovative methodological scheme, heuristic potential of which can be verified in the field of culture research.

Keywords: culture; language; methodological consciousness; transcendental pragmatics

Анотація

Трансформаційно-комунікативні стратегії досліджень: мова - суспільство - культура. С.М. Форкош, Київський національний університет імені Т. Шевченка, 01033, вул. Володимирська, 60, Київ

В статті розглядаються основні стратегії досліджень у гуманітарній сфері пов'язаних з трансформаційно-комунікативним підходом запропонованого К.О-Апелем, який спирається на класичний трансцендентальний метод І. Канта, але у значно ширшому його застосуванні. Синкретичні тенденції у гуманітаристиці зумовлюють пошук критеріїв або узагальнюючих принципів на підставі яких вдалося б не тільки об'єднати основні дослідницькі стратегії, але й охопити множинні прояви соціодинаміки. Мова у різних її проявах стає тим узагальнюючим полем, у якому можливо не тільки описати, але й пояснити різнорідні елементи функціонування соціуму, які в розвиненому вигляді приводять до формування культури. Апель запропонував програму трансформації філософії, за якою передбачалося оновлення посилань традиційної філософії, поняття раціональності й сенсу філософування, що конкретніше реалізується в трансформації традиції трансцендентальної філософії в кантівському варіанті. Основним завданням стає прояснення найважливіших передумов трансцендентально-герменевтичного поняття мови й, відповідно, орієнтованої на мову трансформації трансцендентальної філософії.

Таким чином, трансцендентально-комунікативний підхід дає можливість виявити взаємозв'язок мови і суспільства, науки і культури, становленню інноваційної методологічної схеми, евристичний потенціал якої можна перевірити в полі дослідження культури.

Ключові слова: культура; мова; методологічна свідомість; трансцендентальна прагматика

Аннотация

Трансформационно-коммуникативные стратегии исследований: язык - общество - культура. С.М. Форкош, Киевский национальный университет имени Т. Шевченко, 01033, ул. Владимирская, 60, Киев

В статье рассматриваются основные стратегии исследований в гуманитарной сфере связанных с трансформационно-коммуникативным подходом предложенного К.О-Апелем, который опирается на классический трансцендентальный метод Канта, но широком его применении. Синкретические тенденции в гуманитаристике обусловливают поиск критериев, на основании которых удалось бы не только объединить исследовательские стратегии, но и охватить множественные проявления социодинамики. Язык становится тем обобщающим полем, в котором возможно не только описать, а и объяснить разнородные элементы функционирования социума, приводящих к формированию культуры. Апель предложил программу трансформации философии, по которой предполагалось обновление посылок традиционной философии, понятие рациональности и смысла философствования, что конкретно реализуется в трансформации традиции трансцендентальной философии в кантовском варианте. Основной задачей становится прояснения важнейших предпосылок трансцендентально-герменевтического понятия языка и, соответственно, ориентированной на язык трансформации трансцендентальной философии.

Таким образом трансцендентально-коммуникативный подход дает возможность выявить взаимосвязь языка и общества, науки и культуры, становлению инновационной методологической схемы, эвристический потенциал которой можно проверить в поле исследования культуры.

Ключевые слова: культура; язык; методологическое сознание; трансцендентальная прагматика

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