dear susan,

i understand, i think, what you are objecting and i agree with you that
there are other sensations besides what can be articulated in language.  but
this is a bit besides the point.  you mention modality preferences and i
presume you differentiate between preferences for language, touch, smell,
etc.  these distinctions are not preferred but stated in language and
investigated accordingly. modality preferences are explanations for why some
people observe or respond differently according to the modalities we have
distinguished.  modality preferences are explanation of phenomena that the
observed subjects may not be aware of and able to articulate = have no
access to without the researcher's language.

you mention that there are things we know without language.  my favorite
example is face recognition.  it is difficult to describe someone's face to
someone else so that the latter can pick the described face out of a mass of
faces -- unless there is an outstanding feature, like an eye patch, green
hair, or no nose. but after knowing jane and mary, we can distinguish
between them by their face, not by asking for their name.  but note that
here a  face helps us not to confuse jane with mary, which is not part of
the face but of what we know about jane and mary.

a friend if mine is an art teacher who teaches drawing.  when students make
mistakes or feel it doesn't capture the essence of a face they rarely can
articulate why is this so.  my friend found that most mistakes are made
where we do not words to describe it.  students can draw a nose, the eyes, a
mouth, but what they have difficulties translating from what they see is,
for example, the relationship between a nose and the cheek for which there
are no words to describe it.  the point is that we see and distinguish the
parts of faces through the words we have for them and become very uncertain
where we don't have names for it.

but all these phenomena are besides the point we were discussing -- as i
understand it.  design as an activity may rely on a lot of intuition,
non-articulable senses, and what makes a good designers is not necessarily
describable with some precision.  however, professional designers do
identify themselves as designers to each other and to their stakeholders who
in turn may affirm or deny their claim for the word designer to be
acceptable in the ongoing conversation.  saying i am jesus crist, doesn't
make me jesus crist, unless a lot of people treat me as jesus crist.
identification takes place in conversations, is relational, and when we
discuss design we use language relationally, not cognitively.

note that design is more abstract than, say, the shoes i am wearing, which
is more abstract than the feeling of wearing them.  you feel that feeling
but may not be clear about what it consists of until you can tell yourself
or someone, that they are too short, not wide enough, or pressing on a
particular part of your foot.  when we are talking of what designers do, how
we define design, we don't just feel but argue, bounce opinions off each
other, all of which takes place in conversations.

i think you, terry, and lubomir are looking for some kind of objective
certainty, a language of ideally accurate representation.  i am looking for
language as interaction that produces how we see each other, who we are
consequentially, and that let us justify our designs to others whom we need
to work with.

klaus   

-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related
research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Susan
Hagan
Sent: Thursday, September 24, 2009 9:49 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: On design - again?

Dear Klaus,

Language as the sole source of thought and the basis for designing troubles
me, even though I agree that to only see it as a tool could also be
troubling. I tend to agree with Terry. I have a number of reasons.

First, there is Sinatra's work in the 90s (don't have the reference on this
one) on modality preference. Sinatra suggests that from a very young age, we
chose the modality that we most prefer. If that was all I had, I'd probably
concede to your argument.

Second, there's Flower and Hayes' (1984) work that suggests that there are
many things that we know without language (such as directions), but need to
translate into language in order to communicate with others.

Third, there is Arnheim's, "Visual Thinking" (1969) which suggests that
cognition, in terms of the most important aspects of invention, happens
before we can verbalize it. We use language to capture that inventive,
imaginative stew. Arnheim certainly had an agenda, but he makes good points
about image and invention.

Forth, language is not very good at thinking about scene. It lacks the parts
of speech that might make it more effective (Jackendoff and Landau,1995).

And finally, there are visual ideas that are difficult to communicate
through language if the speaker and the audience don't share the same
history and interests. Language is much better at communicating statements,
questions, and demands (Olson, 1994) while images are much better at
communicating scene (Hagan, 2007). An audience might not be able to imagine
a starving child if they've never seen one. The textual or verbal
description becomes information that we can't really share. In this case,
it's the looking that provides evidence. Hill (2004) has referred to that
evidence by calling on Pierce's index.

I agree with Terry that language is sometimes the primary route to thought
and invention and sometimes not, so I agree with you part of the time. But
in other situations, I agree with Lubomir that language is a tool for
communicating. The situation, including the individual and the audience all
play a role.

Best wishes,

Susan

Arnheim, R. (1969). Visual thinking. Berkeley: University of California
Press.

Flower, L., & Hayes, J. R. (1984). Images, plans, and prose. Written
Communication, 1(1), 120-160.

Hagan, S.M. (2007). Visual/Verbal Collaboration in Print: Complementary
Differences, Necessary Ties, and an Untapped Rhetorical Opportunity. Written
Communication, 24 (1) 49-73.

Hill, C. A. (2004). The psychology of rhetorical images. In C. A. Hill & M.
Helmers (Eds.), Defining visual rhetorics. New Jersey: 
Lawrence Erlbaum.
pp. 25-40

Jackendoff, R., & Landau, B. (1995). Spatial language and spatial cognition.
In R. Jackendoff (Ed.), Languages of the mind: Essays on mental
representation (pp. 99-124). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Olson, D. R. (1994). The world on paper: The conceptual and cognitive
implications of writing and reading. New York: Cambridge University Press.


On 9/24/09 9:03 AM, "Terence Love" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Dear Erik and Klaus,
> 
> I'm aware some people look inside themselves and all they see is language.
> Perhaps some people do everything through language.
> Certainly some people claim they do everything through language.
> I've also read some people say they do their designing visually.
> 
> Some of us do not use language for everything.
> We  can stop using language like stopping using 'thinking'.
> That means that language isn't a necessary and sufficient component of 
> designing.
> It means, epistemologically, it doesn't make sense to make language 
> the essential core of theories of design.
> 
> An alternative - perhaps this would satisfy you - is to say that 
> language is the basis for designing for those for whom language is the 
> basis for their
> designing: others not.
> 
> Best wishes,
> Terry
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> Erik:
> Dear Klaus,
> Thanks for a great post. I agree with your view on language.
>