Conclusions

Review of Frameworks for the Representation of alternative Conceptual Orderings as Determined by Linguistic and Cultural Contexts (Part #26)

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This paper has assembled together a range of pointers to a fundamental problem of information exchange between languages as it might affect issues of information overload and information underuse. Whilst it is relatively easy to ignore the problem when operating within a single (conceptual) language framework, such an attitude would appear to be highly suspect when dealing with the movement of information between different (conceptual) languages or schools of thought. Whilst there are strong and independent pointers to the existence of the problem, these are not yet sufficient to indicate its dimensions. The problem is also easily dismissed by those who are satisfied by the fact that tangible objects such as 'shoe' or 'spade' can be denoted by suitable words under practical conditions. There is however sufficient indication that such satisfaction may be quite premature. For whilst difficulties may be more limited in the case of specific tangible objects, this is far from being the case when dealing with generic and abstract concepts. 

In the haste of the international community to ensure global communication, the differences in the conceptual structures associated with different languages, ideologies and schools of thought are being ignored. Where the matter is studied it is studied as a problem of translation not as a problem of conceptual ordering intimately associated with the language or culture. Nor are these differences mere curiosities, rather they appear to be distinct ways of ordering understanding of the environment. As J Fraser notes in 'The Voices of Time': 

'What for one discipline constitutes necessary and sufficient proof, may be judged from the perspective of another field as neither a necessary nor a sufficient demonstration of fact or truth. What by one set of standards is a salutary and correct argument may sometimes be held, by another set of standards, as a useless waste of energy... Categories of self-expression are not emotionally neutral devices upon which people happen by chance. They are rooted in different ways of life which the disciples seek because they find them satisfying. Of course, it is people and not things who have peronalities, but men and women group themselves accordingly and thereby create, and reinforce, the personalities of their professions' (9, xxvi-xxvii). 

And it is such differences which are capable of exerting a strong influence on the underuse of information. 

The problem of underuse is further aggravated by the mutually exclusive nature of languages. In employing one such conceptual language, one is deprived of the possibility of making simultaneous use of some appropriate complementary language. In response to this constraint there would seem to be a case for exploring 'configurations of languages' and the dynamics of transfer between the languages of the configuration in order to encompass phenomena which are excessively distorted by the capacities of any one language. 

The variety of languages may be treated either as an inconvenient obstacle or as a conceptual resource. As a conceptual resource to determine the strengths and weaknesses of languages under different circumstances, the most promising method of conducting such an investigation appears to be through an adaptation of q-analysis with its explicit recognition of the complex geometries on which people function and which are presumably reflected in the conceptual structure of the language they use. The key to understanding the function of language variety in relation to information overload and underuse would then lie in understanding how information flows through such geometries.

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