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Abstract
This paper proposes to reconsider the relation between language, truth and knowledge, based on an integrational semiology as developed by Roy Harris: at its centre of interest is the question of what it is to know the name of a landmark, and how that in turn relates to the general concept of landmark knowledge. It is claimed here that previous research interested in referential talk involving landmarks adopted a “mythological” view of language and communication, which leads to conflating knowledge with verbal displays of knowledge. Taking the present author's fieldwork in Bellinzona, the capital of Italian-speaking Switzerland, as a case in point, it is argued that by generating communicational situations where informants are unaware of being objects of study and can no longer rely on an “ideal” (and idealized) name–referent relationship (i.e. for each object there is one “proper” name), it becomes possible to understand reference as an integrational process (rather than as a form of linguistic knowledge), which in turn lends further support to the notion of knowledge as integration.
Notes
1. Thus, in such a perspective, when a hearer “confirms” (or “accepts”) a name, this must be either due to his/her sharing the same social knowledge as the speaker or due to his/her not subscribing to the “maxim” according to which it is imperative to ask for additional identification information if a proper name is found to be “informationally insufficient”.
2. It is noteworthy on that score that Ivy Lau and Chi-Yue Chiu collaborated on a project (Lee et al. Citation2005) that looks at a robot's knowledge of (New York and Hong Kong) landmarks, and how informants assess the robot's knowledge of landmarks, namely on the basis of what they know about the robot (e.g. its country of origin) and how that relates to their assessment of the people's knowledge of landmarks in that country (USA, China, Hong Kong).
3. The series of interviews were conducted respectively in 2008, 2009 and 2010. Most of the interviews were carried out by a party of two (i.e. myself and a second observer). This was indeed necessary, as reconstructing what had been said and done without the aid of a recorder turned out to be too difficult a task for one observer only, given the relative complexity of the exchanges.
4. Where the first version is concerned, it is interesting to notice that some of the informants showed their indignation at my friend for letting down a “non-local” like me, by leaving messages that they regarded as too “cryptic” and for switching off his mobile phone.
5. This was not done because of an a priori assumption that “non-locals” are incapable of directing other “non-locals” to the “correct” location (precisely because the integrationist does not accept the categories of “expert” versus “novice” as given facts), but simply because this is what we generally do in a city we are unfamiliar with: we seek the advice of people whose local knowledge we assume to be superior.
6. Each castle is located at topographically distinct points, and different altitudes: Castelgrande was erected on a massive 40-metre-high granite rock, in the middle of the town centre. Montebello was built higher up on a green hill adjacent to the centre. Sasso Corbaro is farthest from the centre, on a wooden hill range overlooking the valley.
7. In fact, all three castles are historically attested as having had the official designations “San Michele”, “San Martino” and “Santa Barbara” during the nineteenth century. The names survived well into the twentieth century as orally used dialectal forms, one of which (San Michele) is still recurrent today as part of the restaurant's name located within the very castle once bearing the name of Saint Michael.
8. The names Uri, Svitto and Unterwalden refer to the three Swiss German “primitive cantons”, under whose sovereignty Bellinzona was placed between 1506 and 1803.