Language does not transmit information.
Language does not transmit information and its functional role is the creation of a cooperative domain of interactions between speakers through the development of a common frame of reference, although each speaker acts exclusively within his cognitive domain where all ultimate truth is contingent to personal experience. Since a frame of reference is defined by the classes of choices which it specifies, linguistic behavior cannot but be rational, that is, determined by relations of necessity within the frame of reference within which it develops. Consequently, no one can ever be rationally convinced of a truth which he did not have already implicitly in his ultimate body of beliefs. (BC 91-92)
However, when it is recognized that language is connotative and not denotative, and that its function is to orient the orientee within his cognitive domain without regard for the cognitive domain of the orienter, it becomes apparent that there is no trnsmission of information through language. It behooves the orientee, as a result of an independent internal operation upon his own state, to choose where to orient his cognitive domain; the choice is caused by the "message," but the orientation thus produced is independent of what the "message" represents from the orienter. In a strict sense then, there is no transfer of though from the speaker to his interlocutor; the listener creates information by reducing his uncertainty through his interactions in his cognitive domain. (BC 49)
This page was last updated on July 11, 1996, by Rob Sable.