The Humpty Dumpty Effect.

“But ‘glory’ doesn’t mean ‘a nice knock-

 down argument,’” Alice objected.

“When I use a word”, Humpty Dumpty

 said, in rather a scornful tone,

“it means just what I choose it to

 mean – neither more nor less”.

“The question is”, said Alice,

“whether you can make words mean

 so many different things”.

“The question is”, said Humpty Dumpty,

“which is to be master –that’s all”.

          Lewis Caroll Through the Looking-Glass 

Humpty Dumpty is making an error that is common among those who misunderstand the role of language in our lives.  He is forgetting that language functions to allow communication between two or more people. Each must have a means of determining the other’s meaning else the notion of communication would be shallow.  Each must also have a means of determining the other’s mistakes or misuse of language.  The capacity of the latter is a necessary condition of the former.  These two factors contribute to what the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein calls the public criteria condition of language use.

What Wittgenstein means by ‘public’ is that the criteria for correct language use are open to discovery by anyone who chooses to look.  While we may hold ‘personal’ opinions as regards the meanings of our expressions, what we mean can never be private (only knowable by us).  ‘Meaning’ is part of the communicative act and must be discoverable.

Implicit in Humpty Dumpty’s argument is the view that our ideas or meanings are nonlinguistic and are more or less formulated in our mind; we think of something and then we shop around in our vocabulary to find suitable words to express our thoughts.  This is what has come to be known as ‘the private language argument’.  Humpty Dumpty holds that ‘what he means’ is different and distinct from the symbols that are the expression of his meaning.

Have you ever encountered someone who has insisted they were trying to express an idea before their mind but they hadn’t quite got a hold of it?  What they are suggesting is that what they are trying to express is already expressed, only in a different language; they have the idea in their head but they need to translate from the mental into the verbal language.  Such people believe that ‘thinking’ is one thing and language use is a different thing entirely.  Unknowingly, they are suffering from the Humpty Dumpty effect.

There’s an old joke about the gentleman who walks into a doctor’s office and exclaims: “I want to be castrated.”  The doctor, somewhat shocked, counseled the man suggesting that his request was somewhat extreme but the man was adamant.  “If you won’t do it, I’ll find someone else, I have to be castrated.” he insisted.  Finally the doctor relented.  The operation was performed and the man slowly regained consciousness in the recovery room.  Looking around, he saw another, much younger, patient in the bed next to him who had also regained consciousness. Feeling somewhat self- satisfied and curious about his younger roommate’s affliction he casually asked: “And what are you in here for?”  “Oh, I’ve been circumcised.” came the reply. Alarmed, the elder patient exclaimed: “That’s the WORD!”

Have you ever been in a situation where you are groping for a word?  Several words are suggested and you reject them.  Finally one is proposed and you say: “That’s what I meant!”  If Humpty Dumpty’s argument was correct we would never be in a position where we need to ‘grope’ for a word – as ‘any old word’ would serve.  More to the point our elder patient cannot argue that he didn’t mean what he said, rather he didn’t say what he should have.  If he said he wanted to be castrated he meant he wanted to be castrated.  How else could the doctor understand his statement?  It may well be that he expected a different outcome from his operation but his expectation is not the meaning of his statement.  It is not a case of our patient not saying what he meant. Rather, it is a case of our patient realizing he did not wish to mean what he meant.

What this example brings home to us is that we think in language but there are not such things as meanings going through our minds in addition to our language.  The language is itself the vehicle of thought.  Our ability to use language is correlate with our ability to think and what we lack in language ability we lack in thinking ability.

Launt Thompson
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