Dear Klaus,
Thanks for a great post. I agree with your view on language. As I read it I
thought about a small study that I together with some students just
finished. It was a study where we interviewed practicing designers about
what tools they use and how they choose their tools. Some of the  results
were what you might expect, but one interesting observation was that to
these designers their tools are not always something separate from
themselves. The tools they like and use are part of who they are, part of
how they think and design. Some talked about how the tools give them their
character as a designer and they could admitted that they don't necessarily
"pick" tools based on their task, they pick tools based on who they want to
be, how they want to be seen or just because the tool "is who they are".

Anyhow, this does not directly relate to the issue of language which of
course in on a different level of depth, but it, again, shows that what
seems to be apparently objective elements in a design process or of a
designer (!), might not be so easily distinguished and separated :-)

Best
Erik

On Wed, Sep 23, 2009 at 10:13 PM, Klaus Krippendorff <
[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> 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
>