dear lubomir,
the view of language as a tool subsequent to adequate conceptualization is
not tenable to me. thinking is not prior to language, it comes with using
the word in various conversations. the poets i know struggle with new
metaphors to guide their articulations, considered by others as poetry.
without acceptance by others, it may be considered uninspiring or gibberish
-- regardless what caused it. i myself have invented a lot of things and
when i examine how they come about, i am almost always coming to the
linguistic articulations that enabled and guided the process of inventing.
if you are multi-lingual, you too may have had the experience of being able
to conceptualize something in one language that you can't conceptualize in
another. moreover, that you are one kind of person in one language and
another person in the other language. only when you are unreflective of how
you interact with others can you come to the conclusion that you are always
the same.
treating language as a tool renders language subordinate to purpose. yet,
purposes surface primarily when others hold you accountable for what you are
doing or proposing. without accounatbility, you can just do without
justification. moreover, suggesting language to be secondary to
conceptualization is a rugged individualist view of the world. to me,
language is a cultural artifact that has evolved in people talking to each
other.
for heidegger, language is the house of being-with others. without it you
don't know what or who you are and for whom. your thinking goes along with
the vocabulary, grammar, and interactions with others. i am not denying
that there are non-linguistic phenomena, images, and terry's body parts, but
they are distinguished and obtain meaning in language.
there is also wittgenstein's argument against the existence of a private
language, i.e., cognition.
i don't think you conceptualize design in the confinement of your cognition,
and once you have a clear conception of design, you merely define it.
instead, you come to speak about design with others who are speaking of
design with you. you may encounter that these others use the word design
unlike you do and if this matter to you, then start negotiating
(coordinating) its use -- but only among those people that matter to you,
for example professional designers, to come back to the issue.
klaus
-----Original Message-----
From: Lubomir Savov Popov [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, September 23, 2009 4:17 PM
To: Klaus Krippendorff; [log in to unmask]
Subject: RE: On design - again?
Hi Klaus,
While it is important to use the language as a tool for communication, the
primary process is conceptualization. Defining design is about
conceptualizing design. Linguistic codification comes after that. Otherwise,
we are restricted by the shell of language. Language is a tool for thinking,
but at the same time very often we are restricted by this tool. You are
multilingual, have experienced several different cultures, and I bet you
have had cases when you realize that particular phrases cannot be translated
simply because there are no such conceptualizations in the other culture. I
am not talking about idioms, but about conceptualization. They are
components of culture rather than language. Idioms are components of
language before being components of culture.
It is (new) conceptualization that makes language to stretch beyond its
shell, to explode, and to evolve. Without (new) conceptualization we may not
experience a very important phenomenon -- terminological deficit. (By the
way, currently we have in our On Design discussion an example of
terminological deficit.) Terminological deficit drives the development of
language and appropriating the language base in new ways, often leading to
evolution of language. While philosophy of linguistic might offer very
powerful heuristic tools, there are a number of situations that can be
viewed more productively from other standpoints.
Best,
Lubomir
-----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 Klaus
Krippendorff
Sent: Wednesday, September 23, 2009 2:28 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: On design - again?
terry,
i don't see how you can CLAIM to DEFINE design without using the language in
which you reside, or consider language as an activity secondary to
(understanding) design. design is a word we use to DISTINGUISH design from
what it is NOT. without that (or similar words) we couldn't TALK about the
DIFFERENCE.
you seem not to be willing to reflect on (TALK of) what you are SAYING when
you DEFINE, DISTINGUISH, IDENTIFY, ARGUE (such as in the email to which this
RESPONDS), and PROFESS to others in CONVERSATIONS how you want to be seen
as. by believing that whatever language constructs as real is real indeed,
you treat language as transparent and are cutting off the branch from the
epistemological tree you are sitting on. this is a trap in need or
examination.
klaus
-----Original Message-----
From: Terence Love [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, September 23, 2009 7:31 AM
To: Klaus Krippendorff; [log in to unmask]
Subject: RE: On design - again?
Hi Klaus,
You say:
" in my working with engineers, they usually profess to be engineers first
and then say the are designing a transmission, for example. engineers go to
engineering schools, not design schools and get a degree in engineering. so
by their own identification they are not designers."
It may be when you are asking them, they see you as a bit 'out of the
action' as it were. It may be this is an 'emic' /'etic' issue.
When I'm with people who don't know much about design research or design and
they ask me what I do, I answer something like ' I work in Humanities' or' I
work in my own business' or 'I'm a researcher'. Whatever, they are general
answers suited to the situation. When asked by designers I'm much more
specific.
Similarly, some people when asked what they do by outsiders answer 'I'm an
engineer'. It's a way of providing an answer that's easy to understand for
people who don't understand the subtleties.
You can be absolutely sure that the person responding "I'm an engineer"
knows the differences between engineering designers, software designers,
process designers, project engineers, dynamicists, stress engineers, QA
specialists etc. and knows exactly which of them they work at. Some people
specialise in engineering design and become engineering designers. That's
why there is such a huge research literature about engineering design.
Engineering Design is a sub-field of Engineering in the same way that
Graphic Design is often considered a sub-field of Humanities or Art ( as in
many graphic designers when asked what they do say something along the lines
of 'I draw stuff'.)
You say:
"the point i was making that all of what you hear from me in[sic] cast in
linguistic terms. although i had a chance of meeting you once, all your
arguments occur in language and i would argue that professional designers
profess in language, are given brief in language, collaborate among
themselves in the completion of a project by talking, and justify their
proposals to stakeholders in an ideally compelling design discourse."
My feeling is that this is best seen as there are many things that happen in
parallel to another process, but association isn't the same as identity and
just cos language happens at the same time as design, its not obvious to me
that it should be taken as central to defining design as an activity.
A silly example: When doing design work people use their bums to sit on.
Bums are also useful as they attaches people's legs to their bodies while
they are designing. It makes sure that their body is the right distance from
their knees when designing, and it's a useful bump to hang their trousers on
to stop them falling down - which might be problematic whilst designing. For
most designers their bums are a significant part of their history. People's
bums are deeply associated with their design work (and usually regarded as
essential to it!) but the lives of our bums are relatively parallel in their
existence to the activities of doing design. Is it essential to define
design activity in terms of our bums? - or the language that they talk?
Similarly the connection between designing and language.
For me, it seems a similar sort of value to define design theory and design
activity in 'language'. It blurs the situation. Assuming that language or
social processes should be central as a matter of course is problematic. If
you assume language and social processes are secondary parallel issues it
seems to me that it makes it much easier to identify essential features of
design activity along with associated internal and external processes of
creativity, affect, visualisation and decisionmaking etc.
All the best,
Terry
-----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 Klaus
Krippendorff
Sent: Tuesday, 22 September 2009 11:33 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: On design - again?
terry,
yes and no.
in my working with engineers, they usually profess to be engineers first and
then say the are designing a transmission, for example. engineers go to
engineering schools, not design schools and get a degree in engineering. so
by their own identification they are not designers.
the same with public opinion researchers. they say they inquire into public
opinion, usually are trained social scientists, but they readily tell you
that they design a questionnaire and the survey they are conducting with it.
while the design of questionnaires is part of their job, they do not call
themselves designers nor do they go to a design school to get their degree.
i think one has to listen to how people fit themselves in various
institutional frameworks before theorizing and categorizing what they do in
one way or another. of course one can argue with all of them, try to
preserve one's own favorite term for one's own activities, but then one
becomes a politician or lawyer who designs conceptual systems for the
allocation of authorities and the distribution of resources.
the point i was making that all of what you hear from me in cast in
linguistic terms. although i had a chance of meeting you once, all your
arguments occur in language and i would argue that professional designers
profess in language, are given brief in language, collaborate among
themselves in the completion of a project by talking, and justify their
proposals to stakeholders in an ideally compelling design discourse
klaus
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