LITERARY UNIVERSALS WEBLOG: A series of informal observations and conjectures aimed at fostering more reflection on and discussion about cross-cultural patterns in literature.
Patrick Colm Hogan, University of Connecticut
A few months ago, I served as one referee for Stephen Levinson’s excellent new book, The Interaction Engine: Language in Social Life and Human Evolution. In this book and in earlier works, Levinson has been very critical of other linguists’—especially Noam Chomsky’s—claims about universals of language structure. In consequence, he is sometimes viewed as an anti-universalist, not entirely without reason (see, for example, chapter two of Irish). However, Levinson acknowledges the existence of cross-language patterns in language structure, at least of a statistical or implicational variety. (On statistical, implicational, and absolute universals, see “What Are Literary Universals?”) Admittedly, Levinson does not find such patterns particularly engaging or illuminating, but that seems to me largely a matter of personal taste, not anything entailed by his arguments. What is more important, he finds other universals of language to be quite significant, as well as consequential for our understanding of the origins of language and other important topics. Specifically, Levinson explores the idea that robust universals may be found in language usage or pragmatics. In examining these universals, he develops the relevant implications of such pragmatic principles as Gricean cooperation, along with more general affective and cognitive processes, such as empathy and Theory of Mind. (In his “cooperative principle,” Paul Grice famously articulated general rules that govern our production and interpretation of speech, but that go beyond strict logic. For example, suppose you say, “I haven’t seen Jones in a while,” and then I say, “The flu has been particularly virulent this year.” You will take me to be suggesting that Jones had the flu, not making some irrelevant comment.) Specifically, Levinson recruits research on cooperation, etc., to formulate explanations of a range of absolute universals, such as conversational turn-taking. Moreover, his explanations do not address these universals at a merely general level. Rather, he enters into details, treating features of the processes in question, such as the precise timing of turn-taking.
Not long after I had read Levinson’s manuscript, I received an email from my friend, Bradley Irish. Brad was working on a book manuscript treating universalism and its status in the humanities and social sciences. Among other things, he told me that a number of linguists he had read or spoken with reported that most linguists no longer supported the idea of language universals. They attributed the sea-change in the discipline to an article by Evans and Levinson that appeared in the prestigious journal, Brain and Behavioral Sciences, in 2009. Brad wanted to get my opinion. I explained that I was not in a position to judge what most linguists currently believe, though when I spoke with colleagues in linguistics at the University of Connecticut, they vigorously disagreed with this characterization of their profession today.
In any event, I decided that I should read the article. In the usual format of Brain and Behavioral Sciences, there was a target article (by Evans and Levinson, in this case), followed by a number of rejoinders from prominent researchers in the field, followed by a response to the rejoinders. The article and rejoinders clearly raise issues relevant to the Literary Universals Project, specifically issues surrounding the identification of universals.
The first thing to say about the article is that, whatever one thinks of the specific arguments, it really should not be characterized as “anti-universalist,” though it is easy to see how readers might come away with that impression. In fact, Evans and Levinson, along with most of the commentators on their article, accept that view that there are recurring structures and processes across languages. As I have already suggested, Evans and Levinson accept universals primarily in the broad sense in which Joseph Greenberg used the term and which is also the sense in which it is used on this website. (On the other hand, Evans and Levinson clearly do not care for Greenberg’s terminology and would evidently prefer restricting the term, “universal,” to absolute universals.) For example, in the abstract for their article, they write that “there are significant recurrent patterns in organization” across languages (429). Thus, they are not disputing universality as such. Rather, they are disputing a particular set of claims about language universals—specifically, the claims that an innate Universal Grammar underlies all natural, human languages, yielding an extensive uniformity of principles across languages, principles that are almost entirely modular in the sense that they refer to language features without appeal to contextual or pragmatic functions, such as communication. In contrast, Evans and Levinson maintain that the “recurrent patterns” are tendential, rather than absolute, and that they are “better explained as stable engineering solutions satisfying multiple design constraints, reflecting both cultural-historical factors and the constraints of human cognition” (429). In other words, the object of their critical argument is not so much universalism as a certain sort of innatism, one that leads to extensive claims about absolute universals and restricts the possible explanations for those universals to innate, specifically linguistic structures and processes.
I am not at all certain that Evans and Levinson’s account is fully accurate with regard to Chomsky’s views on these topics, at the time or subsequently. (Chomsky is the main target of their criticisms.) However, I largely agree with their positive claims, as well as their methodological concerns. As to the latter, in On Interpretation (1996), I maintained that Chomsky’s innatism is not as parsimonious as possible and that at least some of the grammatical facts he seeks to explain by complex rules are themselves well-explained by locating language in its social, interactive context. Moreover, I maintained that the patterns Chomsky isolates are often not strict rules, but looser tendencies and preferences. In addition, I followed Hilary Putnam and others in arguing that language acquisition does not require a specialized, innate apparatus, but can draw on “generalized learning strategies” (see Putnam “The ‘Innateness Hypothesis’” and “What is Innate”). Specifically, my contention was that, in a variety of cases, both structure and acquisition could be understood by reference to communicative intent along with ordinary principles of rational inference.
I should stress that none of this is intended to be in any way dismissive of Chomsky’s work. In fact, I consider that work to be exemplary of scientific theorizing at its very best. Indeed, I find Chomsky’s analyses deeply insightful and clarifying, even when I end up disagreeing with them. The crucial point here is just that my claims are closely related to those of Evans and Levinson, but remain compatible with a robust universalism. Part of this relatedness includes the greater attention to statistical, domain-general, and communicative universals than would be found in Chomsky-type—or generativist–formalisms. This derives from the fact that the cross-language patterns claimed by different theories are themselves (somewhat) different. Most obviously, the nature of innately-specified universals is different from the nature of universals that are not innately specified. As I have repeatedly tried to stress in discussing universals with skeptics, “universal” does not mean or imply “innate as such”; for example, universals may arise from convergent development derived from responses to recurring social or physical problems. This is a point that should be obvious, but apparently is not—hence the need to repeat it.
On the other hand, the generativists make many extremely valuable observations and draw surprising, insightful inferences, which non-generativists need to take account of. This is clear in the generativist responses to Evans and Levinson’s article. These responses repeatedly criticize Evans and Levinson for taking superficial differences at face value, thereby failing to recognize sometimes non-obvious patterns that subsume the apparent differences. Whatever one thinks of any specific cases treated by generativists, the general point should be underscored, not only for linguistic universals, but for literary universals also. Indeed, the apparent self-evidence of cultural difference, as we might call it, is perhaps the single greatest obstacle to the development of a scientific treatment of universals. An initial, spontaneous sense of alienation in the face of unfamiliar artifacts or practices commonly underwrites the dismissal of the universalist project right from the start, thereby barring even the most basic attempts at identifying possible, cross-cultural patterns.
It may be difficult for readers to imagine a relevant case where the prima facie foreignness of a practice conceals an underlying commonality, and I doubt that the examples from linguistics would prove very illuminating for students of literature. I will therefore try to clarify this issue with a brief example (selected and summarized from work in progress). I have maintained that one cross-culturally recurring story genre is defined by the protagonist’s goal of seeking some sort of personal retribution, usually outside the standard, social procedures for the punishment of crime (see Affective Narratology, 120-135). Such revenge narratives form a “minor” or less frequent genre, but they appear significantly in a range of traditions. I obviously cannot overview a variety of cases from different literary traditions here. However, a valuable way of approaching the issue of cross-cultural genres is by treating selected, prominent cases, what I refer to as paradigms. In the Western tradition, a work such as Shakespeare’s Hamlet is highly paradigmatic; indeed, it has received almost unparalleled attention and has been the object of almost unequalled praise. Though not nearly as revered as Hamlet, Ji Junxiang’s Great Revenge of the Zhao Orphan has a notable position in Chinese literary history, making it an appropriate work for comparison. For example, Shih-pe Wang notes that “Wang Guowei (1877-1927), the founding figure of the study of Chinese drama, proposed that the play should be considered one of the great tragedies of world literature” (127). In addition, it is one of the “most frequently performed Chinese plays on the world’s stages” and has appeared in numerous versions (127; see also Li 17-19). For our purposes, the important point here is that these two paradigmatic works are both instances of the revenge genre. Put crudely, even if there were few other revenge stories in either tradition, it would still be reasonable to see both traditions as significantly including this genre. (There is nothing comparable in language as such, and thus in the study of linguistic universals.) Other paradigmatic works treating revenge would include, in Japan, Chikamatsu’s Drum of the Waves of Horikawa and Zeami’s Atsumori; and, in Greece, Aeschylus’s Oresteia trilogy, among others.
Revenge narratives are built out of a protagonist’s suffering some harm, in recompense for which he or she seeks to subject his or her (presumptively guilty) antagonist to equal or greater harm. The harm at issue often involves loss of status; it almost invariably involves attachment loss, either the death of a loved one or betrayal by a trusted companion (friend, spouse, or family member). Status harm, attachment loss, and personal betrayal are likely to elicit empathic anger on the part of the reader, often leading him or her to hope that the hero succeeds in snuffing out the unworthy life of the treacherous enemy. But, thematically, revenge narratives are frequently, perhaps usually, ambivalent. For one thing, the covert nature of the hero’s revenge leads to “collateral damage,” most obviously the accidental deaths of innocents. When the hero does manage to do in the right person, this may result in a self-perpetuating cycle of violence. As Martha Nussbaum stresses about revenge in real life, in no case does it reverse the original harm (e.g., resurrecting the dead beloved); even at its best, it succeeds only in adding new injury (not even simple insult, but palpable suffering) to prior injury. These problems are brought out particularly by the contrast between revenge and the closely related criminal investigation genre, for it is precisely the absence of an (unbiased) criminal investigation that makes the faults of revenge so salient. The point is particularly clear in Aeschylus.
Readers familiar with Ji’s play (as well as Hamlet) will already have recognized that these plays share some of the prototypical characteristics just outlined. Fundamentally, both the orphan and Hamlet lose their father to a politically usurping enemy and both set out to slay that enemy. However, there are apparently some striking differences on other features I see as prototypical. Specifically, in keeping with the assumption that Chinese culture looks more favorably on revenge than does Western culture, one might interpret the Chinese play as having little ambivalence. Once he learns of the misdeeds of his enemy, the orphan is single-minded in his rage against that enemy. There is none of the waffling and delay that we find in Hamlet. Moreover, the revenge of the orphan does not lead to the deaths of any innocents, while Hamlet’s plot puts Polonius, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern—and, indirectly, Cordelia—into their graves prematurely. Indeed, we even find Hamlet setting up a sort of sting operation designed to provide him with concrete evidence of his uncle’s guilt—a sequence that immediately recalls the sorts of tactics associated with criminal investigations. Finally, Hamlet himself ends up dead, unlike the orphan. Given all this, it would be easy to read the two plays as very different, and as testifying to a stark, cultural difference between their societies.
But these superficial differences readily mislead us into missing some striking similarities in the two works. One problem is the cultural clichés that surround the plays. Despite a famous passage in the The Classic of Rites that urges revenge (1.70), there is ample evidence that opposition to revenge is equally culturally supported in Chinese tradition (see Cheng). There is also empirical evidence that Chinese people have ambivalent feelings about revenge (see the study reported in Huang). Moreover, while Hamlet is tasked with killing his uncle, the orphan must kill the man who is, in effect, his adoptive father. Ambivalence may not be explicit in the character who takes revenge (i.e., the orphan). However, the emotional complexity is clear in the larger thematic and affective development of the play. Conversely, Hamlet is arguably rather less ambivalent than we are inclined to assume. For example, he does not appear to have any affection for his uncle. Moreover, the well-known quandary of critics has been, “Why does Hamlet delay?” (see, for example, https://www.shakespeare-online.com/plays/hamlet/hamletfivereasons.html), which at least appears to suggest that the critics are in favor of the revenge and would like to see the prince get on with it.
The preceding points may, then, lead us to ask what it is that enables both plays to convey complex attitudes toward revenge. As to The Zhao Orphan, I have argued that the play is a sort of allegory appealing to Southern Sòng Dynasty loyalists to rise up against the alien, Yuán Dynasty rulers, taking revenge for the usurpation of the earlier, indigenous dynasty. If this interpretation is valid, then we can make sense of details of the play, such as the whole idea of making the orphan in effect into the adopted child of his enemy (see Hogan “Paradoxes”).
How, then, is this related to Hamlet? The relation is not readily ascertained by fixing on the superficial properties of the plays. It requires a recognition that both Hamlet and the Zhao orphan cannot in fact choose the impartial option of criminal investigation. The objectivity and fairness of criminal investigation are upheld by the integrity of the social institutions that engage in such investigation. The problem in these plays is that—literally in Hamlet, allegorically in The Zhao Orphan–the criminals themselves constitute the government. This results in a situation where the only possible outcome of criminal investigation is itself a doubling of the crime, as Hamlet or the orphan would inevitably be made a victim once again. (In addition, both plays do this by combining the revenge structure with the usurpation sequence of the heroic prototype, which is another striking commonality.)
As I hope this illustrates, the plays are not well characterized by Evans and Levinson’s celebratory affirmation of vast linguistic (here, by extension, literary) diversity. These plays are, instead, much better characterized by Mark Baker’s comment that, “each new language [literary work] I have studied presents both fascinating new examples of diversity and important new evidence that human languages [or literary genres] are all variations on the same theme[s].” (448).
I might summarize (and slightly extend) the preceding reflections as follows: There is a striking contrast today between two different approaches to linguistics, with implications for the study of literary universals. One group (which includes generativists) is concerned principally with the algorithmic generation of descriptions and explanations of language structure, formulated in terms of well-defined, fully explicit systems, often derived from mathematical models. The other is, roughly, humanistic in orientation and tends to stress the experiential plausibility of descriptions and explanations, drawing on less abstract models from biology, and focused on language function. Both have advantages and disadvantages. Personally, I tend to favor the explanations of the humanistic group—the emphasis on communication, the appeal to a range of contributory causal factors, and so on. However, I often see the rigorous descriptions undertaken by the mathematical group as more insightful and illuminating—as with, for example, their work to formulate the structure of languages in terms of principles and parameters. One aspect of this difference is that the humanists, it may be argued, considerably underestimate the extent of universals, taking superficial differences at face value; at the same time, the mathematical group tends to rely too heavily on innatism in explaining the universals. Students of literary universals have things to learn from both groups. However, the biases of most literary researchers today are clearly parallel with those of the humanistic group. For this reason, despite the fact that I tend to agree with the explanations offered by the humanistic group, I must say that students of literature have more to learn from the mathematical group. This includes learning to identify underlying commonalities across traditions—thus literary universals–especially those that are concealed by superficial differences.
Works Cited
Baker, Mark. “Language Universals: Abstract But Not Mythological.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 32 (2009): 448-449.
Cheng, Anne. “Filial Piety with a Vengeance: The Tension Between Rites and Law in the Han.” Filial Piety in Chinese Thought and History, edited by Alan Chan and Sor-hoon Tan, RoutledgeCurzon 2004, pp. 29-43.
Classic of Rites, The. (禮記 [Lǐjì]). Trans. James Legge. Available at https://ctext.org/liji (accessed 12 April 2020).
Evans, Nicholas and Stephen Levinson. “The Myth of Language Universals: Language Diversity and Its Importance for Cognitive Science.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 32 (2009): 429-448.
Grice, Paul. Studies in the Way of Words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1989.
Hogan, Patrick Colm. Affective Narratology: The Emotional Structure of Stories. Lincoln, NE: U of Nebraska P, 2011.
Hogan, Patrick Colm. On Interpretation: Meaning and Inference in Law, Psychoanalysis, and Literature. Athens, GA: U of Georgia P, 1996.
Hogan, Patrick Colm. “Paradoxes of Literary Emotion: Simulation and The Zhào Orphan.” In The Routledge Companion to Literature and Emotion. Ed. Patrick Colm Hogan, Bradley Irish, and Lalita Pandit Hogan. New York: Routledge, 2022, 134-43.
Huang, Jialing. “Loving Shuang Ju: Chinese Audiences’ Entertainment Experience of Retribution Narratives.”Psychology of Popular Media 13.3 (2023): 447-456.
Irish, Bradley. The Universality of Emotion: Perspectives from the Sciences and Humanities. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, forthcoming.
Levinson, Stephen. The Interaction Engine: Language in Social Life and Human Evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, forthcoming.
Li, Wai-yee. “Introduction.’ In The Columbia Anthology of Yuan Drama. Ed. C. T. Hiah, Wai-yee Li, and George Kao. New York: Columbia UP, 2014.
Nussbaum, Martha. Anger and Forgiveness: Resentment, Generosity, Justice. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2016.
Putnam, Hilary. “The Innateness Hypothesis’ and Explanatory Models in Linguistics.” In Mind, Language and Reality: Philosophical Papers (Vol. 2). Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1975
Putnam, Hilary. “What is Innate and Why: Comments on the Debate.” In Language and Learning: The Debate Between Jean Piaget and Noam Chomsky. Ed. Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1980, 397-409.
Wang, Shih-pe. The Orphan of Zhao: The Meaning of Loyalty and Filiality. In How to Read Chinese Drama: A Guided Anthology. New York: Columbia UP, 2022, 127-150.