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From: gilbert@aimmi.UUCP (Gilbert Cockton)
Newsgroups: net.cog-eng,net.research
Subject: Re: Utterances
Message-ID: <797@aimmi.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 1-Sep-86 09:06:50 EDT
Article-I.D.: aimmi.797
Posted: Mon Sep  1 09:06:50 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 2-Sep-86 21:27:55 EDT
References: <639@bcsaic.UUCP> <792@aimmi.UUCP> <2133@milano.UUCP>
Reply-To: gilbert@aimmi.UUCP (Gilbert Cockton)
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Organization: Heriot-Watt/Strathclyde Alvey MMI Unit, Scotland
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Xref: mnetor net.cog-eng:265 net.research:412

In article <2133@milano.UUCP> wex@milano.UUCP writes:

>I think that Mr. Cockton misinterprets the original posting, but does so in
>an interesting way.  It seemed to me that the original request had to do
>with linguistic repetitions, where a sentence is repeated word-for-word.
>

Glad to have my ideas regarded as interesting, thank you.  However, I think
I've widened rather than misinterpreted the question in the original posting,
as I was thinking about repeated utterances as * linguistic reflections *
of shared beliefs, and not just the beliefs/ideas themselves. I was being
logocentric.

>What Cockton has done is to cast the question in the semantic domain by
>remarking on some people's lack of original thought.  It is not important
> what words they use; the ideas are repeated.  

Granted, but the same words are often used by stereotype-fitting groups 
(e.g. Sloans, provincial business men, Militants, Born-again Christians, 
worn out Trade Unionists, politicians, usenet policemen, etc. etc. ad nauseam,
PLUS some groups I belong to).  Here are some made up examples (no time to do
proper research - excuse empirical laziness) for each group:

	"Don't be such an oik Jeremy"
	"This government does nothing for small businesses"
	"The Lord will provide"
	"Workers, fight capitalist oppression by a police state!"
	"We are in a confrontation situation"
	"I cannot answer hypothetical questions"
	"FLAME ON!!!!! Keep this junk out of net.general"
	"Let's not get bogged down in methodology"
	"Can you see anything from the top?"
	"Divn't ye work yer ticket wi' me!"

>  .........................................  That leads to the interesting
> question: "how much thought is original?" 

And also to the question "How many utterances have any conscious thought
behind them?" (Marxist answer: Only ours, false consciousness doesn't count!).
Many utterances have a ritual significance which say more about the speaker's
role and place in a group than they do about the speaker's active model of
the manipulable world. Thus I expect ritual utterances (church services,
police arrest speeches, annual reports, social niceties) to be the most
repeated utterances, after advertising cliches!

I've seen a few statistical contributions to the discussion so far. Given
an adequate corpus of utterances for the experimental situation (which
you'll never get as you don't know what an adequate corpus is until you
know the significant variables, and you won't know what these are until
you've studied a representative population) you might get a reliable
NUMBER (wow). However, as with all statistics, you'll be no wiser about WHY
certain utterances are so common in certain contexts.

Death to all naive empiricism. I want explanations, not descriptions. As for
data ...................