Discussion on Chapter 3 - How Ordianary is Ordianary Language?

The essay I will discuss this week is chapter three titled,  How Ordinary Is Ordinary Language?   Fish starts out the article by giving one definition of ordinary language.

Ordinary language “presents or mirrors facts independently of any consideration of any value, interest, perspective, purpose an so on.” 

Fish then explains how he came up with definition by looking at the conflict seen between linguistics and critics.  The linguistics claim literature is language and they can describe the text by using linguistics and that will be relevant while the critics say just a linguistic analysis leaves out something and that something is what makes literature.  Fish following their disagreements and discussion and says the two camps cannot agree what literature is but they agree by default that there is an ordinary language.  Critics argue that linguistics should stick to the analysis of ordinary text and leave literature to them. 

The definition of ordinary text then becomes what literature is not:

1.  carries messages

2. logical

3.valueless – “ language is an entity that can be specified  independently of human values .”

The definition of literature is

1.  contains our values – This is a need to create a way where our “values can claim pride of place”

2. contains intentions and purpose

However Fish points out that if our ordinary language is void of values then the norm is impoverished so deviation from the norm (literature) is even worse.  Fish states “Deviation theories always trivialize the norm and therefore trivialize everything else.  (Everyone loses.)”

Fish goes on to discuss new theories from linguistics about ordinary language.  The new studies show that linguistics is not just labeling items, but utterances (words, phrases, messages) have values, intentions and purpose.  These are the same terms that were used to describe literary language.  Fish comes to the conclusion that ordinary language and literary languages are the same. 

So what is literature?  Are we back to the start that literature is no different from everyday language?  No there is a difference we just need to think about it differently.  I like the quote by Roman Jakobson on literary theory “What makes a verbal message a work of art.”    Fish goes through a huge essay to describe that it is not the opposite of ordinary language and the way we know literature is by our communities.

We decide what literature is based upon the community of readers.  The criteria the literary community imposes will determine what literature is.  The criteria can and will change over time.  Our culture and the time period will affect the way we read and pay attention to a text.  Aesthetics is a historical process.

Fishes definition of literature is:

1. Product of a way of reading

2. Community agreement about what will count as literature

3 Creation of literature is made by the community and the criteria it puts forth.

This ties into his article “How do we know a poem when we see one.”  We know it because our literary community has already defined the criteria as to what constitutes a poem.