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1. A Sociological Hermeneutics
for Schizophrenic language
KEITH DOUBT*
Northeast Missouri State Unive rsity
Drawing upon Kenneth Burke’s distinction between semantic and poetic
meaning in all language used by human actors, a sociological hermeneutics for
understanding the social character of schizophrenic language is developed. The
study’s perspective is identified through a critical review of Roy Wolcott, Harry
Stack Sullivan, Norman Cameron, Gregory Bateson, and Janusz Wrobel’s work
on the language of schizophrenia. A humanistic interest in the development of
more inclusive and open interactions with people suffering from schizophrenia
is advocated.
Today, research on schizophrenia examines the genetic and neurological character
of the disease to such a high and exclusive degree that the subject of how
schizophrenia is socially defined and understood is almost entirely neglected.’ It
is important for sociologists to redress this matter if for no other reason than the
one that Talcott Parsons cites when he writes on medical sociology:
Participation in the social system is always potentially relevant to the state of
illness, to its etiology and to the conditions of successful therapy, as well as
to other things.’
A definite problem that exists for the treatment and understanding of
schizophrenia lies in the realm of interpersonal communication. A crucial problem
that the person with schizophrenia experiences is the inability to interpret others’
language and behavior and respond not only appropriately but also persuasively.
The problem, moreover, is not one-sided. In a hospital setting, the language of
*Direct all correspondence to: Keith Doubt, Division of Social Science, Northeast Missouri State University,
Kirksville, Missouri 63501.
The Social Science Journal, Volume 31, Number 2, pages 111-125.
Copyright @ 1994 by JAI Press Inc.
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ISSN: 0362-3319.

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someone afflicted with schizophrenia is used to diagnose the pathology, and, with
this clinical goal in mind, a physician listens to patient’s language in a particular
way, a way that may not even hear the person’s language as social or communicative.
The examining physician hears the schizophrenic language concretely, as a sign
that directly and immediately corresponds to a pathology; schizophrenic language
is often characterized as babble, wordsalad, or unintelligible chatter.
The purpose of this article is to address the use of language by someone with
schizophrenia as not the sign of a pathology (although we do not deny this aspect
of the schizophrenic’s language), but the symbolic action of a social actor who is
self-conscious and intelligent.3 The underlying assumption is that, if sociologists
could develop enlightened understandings of the social character of schizophrenic
language, sociology would be providing people afflicted with schizophrenia with
opportunities to participate more meaningfully and fully in their social world. To
provide those afflicted with schizophrenia the chance for more inclusive relations
with others, sociology needs to develop conceptual positions from which to recognize
and understand people afflicted with schizophrenia as motive-guided actors.4
The work of Kenneth Burke provides the underlying principle through which
we conduct this study.5 Speaking about Burke’s significance to sociology, Joseph
Gusfield writes:
Sociology and literature meet, for Burke, in that in both language must be
understood by what it does, by how it affects the situation, the audience, to
which it is addressed. Words are not empty folders, hanging in the air. They
move audiences to responses and move the speakers to define and redefine their
contexts.6
The conceptual richness of Burke’s work with respect to the sociological study of
human action and social relations is well documented. Burke’s Permanence and
Change: An Anatomy of Purpose, The Philosophy of Literary Form: Studies in
Symbolic Action, A Grammar of Motives, A Rhetoric of Motives, The Rhetoric
of Religion, and Language as Symbolic Action are all classics that have significantly
influenced the work of such leading sociologists as Erving Goffman, Hugh Duncan,
C. W. Mills, Harold Garfinkel, and Talcott Parsons.
Given the limit of our topic with respect to the subject’s effective use of language
and the difficulty of understanding the subject in ways that are not speculative,
we restrict our discussion to one conceptual distinction in Burke’s work, namely,
the distinction between semantic and poetic meaning. Burke articulates a simple
distinction between two fundamental types of meaning that he says is conveyed
in all language used by human actors: One, he calls, semantic meaning; the other,
he calls poetic. Burke’s formulation of the qualitatively different but nevertheless
interrelated character of these two types of meaning encourages insightful
interpretations of the symbolic character of language in social interaction. While
Burke’s distinction is simple, his formulation of the relation between the two types
of meaning is sophisticated. Burke argues that it is wrong to see the relation between
these two types of meaning as antithetical and, at the same time, naive not to see
the relation between the two as dialectical.’

3. A Sociological Hermeneutics for Schizophrenic Language 113
Both types of meaning are ideal, that is, they cannot exist in absolute
independence of the other. Burke describes semantic meaning as:
... the ideal of the logical positivist. Logical positivism would point to events.
It would attempt to describe events after the analogy of the chart (as a map
could be said to describe America). And the significance of its pointing lies in
the instructions implicit in the name.’
Burke argues that the logical positivist has a nondialectical understanding of how
language is used by human actors insofar as the logical positivist does not take
into account the presence of poetic meaning, which inevitably appears even in the
language of logical positivism. To demonstrate this point, Burke observes the
following irony:
We should point out that, although the semantic ideal would eliminate the
attitudinal ingredient from its vocabulary (seeking a vocabulary for events equally
valid for use by friends, enemies, and the indifferent) the ideal is itself an attitude,
hence never wholly attainable, since it could be complete only by the abolition
of itself. To the logical positivist, logical positivism is a “good” term, otherwise
he would not attempt to advocate it by filling it out in all its ramifications.’
In contrast to semantic meaning, Burke says (and notice the difficulty in
attempting to define poetic meaning, that is, to present poetic meaning in semantic
terms):
Poetic meanings, then, cannot be disposed of on the true-or-false basis. Rather,
they are related to one another like a set of concentric circles, of wider and
wider scope. Those of wider diameter do not categorically eliminate those of
narrower diameter. There is, rather, a progressive encompussment.‘0
For Burke semantic and poetic meanings are noteably different and yet always
interdependent. Such, for Burke, is the guiding principle of the dynamic nature
of symbolic action in social discourse. In this study, we explore the following
questions: How are people afflicted with schizophrenia subject to this linguistic
process in social interaction., 7. In what sense are the interactions of people afflicted
with schizophrenia social ?; What is needed to recognize people afflicted with
schizophrenia as motive-guided actors?; and, finally, How do people afflicted with
schizophrenia, even while psychotic, engage in symbolic action rather than behavior
externally governed?”
The study proposes a straightforward and effective hermeneutics for
understanding the inherently social foundation of interactions between those
afflicted and those not afflicted with schizophrenia drawing upon Burke’s
distinction between semantic and poetic meaning. The proposal is presented
through a critical review of previous literature in the social sciences on schizophrenic
language. The purpose is to initiate the development of more inclusive and open
interactions between schizophrenics and nonschizophrenics in ever
,Y
day life. The
interest is humanistic, and this interest dominates the examination.

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IS SCHIZOPHR
E
NIC L
ANGUAGE PR
IVAT
E
?
One study that helps identify the specific parameters of our proposal is Roy H.
Wolcott’s “Schizophrenese: A Private Language.“13 This study is noteable in its
conceptual presentation of schizophrenic language as language rather than chatter.
Schizophrenese (which itself is a label) is language because, Wolcott argues, it may
be “characterized by a vocabulary, a set of rules, and criteria for the application
of ru1es.“14Wolcott’s parallel claim that schizophrenese is a private language, a
language “with a private meaning system of private objects which are inner,
unknown, and unshared,” strikes us, however, as misguided.15 To our mind, the
phrase “private language” is an oxymoron. For language to be language, it must
be social. This is Burke’s great insight: Language in which there is an absence of
intersubjectivity is not really language at all.
A second aspect of Wolcott’s study that we question is Wolcott’s endorsement
of the normative preference for semantic meaningfulness over and above poetic
meaningfulness. Wolcott writes:
Most of us, myself included, feel that people should talk straight and talk so
that others can easily understand them.. .. most people would agree that
ordinary language is more efficient, more logical, and more conducive to
linguistic competence than schizophrenese.. .. I would suggest that the
psychiatrist should seek to get the patient ultimately to use ordinary language.16
To talk straight is to talk where the standard of semantic meaningfulness
dominates and, in a certain way, tyrannizes talk. Wolcott recommends that
psychiatrists use “behavior modification” to influence those afflicted with
schizophrenia to comply with the normative order that favors talking straight rather
than, say, humorously, satirically, sarcastically, or ironically.
We object to the underlying assumptions in Wolcott’s comments. Linguistic
competence is not, as the logical positivist maintains, the privileging of semantic
meaningfulness over poetic meaningfulness. The beauty of language resides not in
the exchange of clear communication, but in the rich and complex use of symbols
to convey meaningfulness. Linguistic competence, as Burke tells us, is the awareness
of the qualitative difference between semantic and poetic meaningfulness and the
appreciation of the lively interplay between the two.
We understand why Wolcott takes the position on this issue that he does. Wolcott
endorses the consensus of a large number of people, the majority of our society,
that all should talk clearly like ordinary people because that is the consensus. For
critical sociologists, however, consensus in and of itself is not the legitimating
principle of social knowledge. While, yes, the norm in our society rewards language
use that complies with semantic expectations and punishes language use that does
not, the task for critical sociologists is to understand the basis of this normative
expectation, its limits, and how it might be otherwise.
Susan Baur in her work 77reDinosaur Man: Tales of Madness and Enchantment
from the Back Ward shows healthy insight in identifying the problem that Wolcott
uncritically promotes.

5. A Sociological Hermeneutics for Schizophrenic Language 115
When I told the ward psychologist that Dallas Grey was letting me in on “the
code” that signaled for him the onset of torture, it was suggested that I tell him,
“We don’t speak code in this hospital. When you’re ready to talk my language,
I’m ready to listen.” This was intended to teach Mr. Grey that crazy talk drives
people away-a useful lesson.”
To tell the patient that “We don’t speak code in this hospital” is to tell the patient
that we only listen to language that is semantically governed. Language that is
poetically governed, “code,” is, according to this ward psychologist, unacceptable
and inappropriate in the hospital setting.
IS SCHIZOPHR
E
NIC L
ANGUAGE A PSYCHOANAL
YT
IC PR
OBL
E
M?
A second work that we use to explicate the proposal of this study is Harry Stack
Sullivan’s essay “The Language of Schizophrenia.“” Sullivan, a practicing medical
psychiatrist, makes the following psychoanalytical point about the use of language
by people afflicted with schizophrenia:
I diagnose schizophrenia by certain types of disturbance of speech
unaccompanied by chagrin, but I have yet to see a schizophrenic early in his
illness who has not been chagrined by hearing himself say certain things to me
which he recognized afterwards as incommunicative.‘9
Chagrin is, in George Herbert Mead’s terms, when our “me” is aware of the
contradictory behavior and attitude of our “I.“’ Chagrin is an instance of self-
reflection where self-consciousness recognizes a significant discordance between
those two parts of the self that Mead calls the “me” and the “I.” Sullivan, we see,
characterizes schizophrenic language as human language where the self’s “me” is
conspicuously absent or, put another way, the self’s “I” is all that is present.21
One problem with this characterization is that it could just as easily be used to
describe the nature of a Freudian slip. After having a Freudian slip pointed out,
one experiences chagrin as described above by Sullivan. Sullivan sees schizophrenia
as a psychoanalytic problem and in doing so does not in fact introduce the concepts
that are needed to understand the nature of schizophrenic language use.
Here is why we resist the psychoanalytic account of schizophrenia, which is not
to say that Sullivan is the most articulate advocate of this account. It seems clear
that what Mead calls an actor’s “me” is just as present in the schizophrenic’s
language use as the non-schizophrenic’s. Before the onslaught of this illness, the
person afflicted had a developed self, and there is no reason to think that, upon
suffering this affliction, the person suddenly lacks a developed self. The person with
schizophrenia experiences shame or pride, guilt or honor (the social experiences
of the “me’? to the same degree as the person not afflicted with schizophrenia. While
schizophrenia is a disease that leaves the self distraught, it is not a disease that
radically changes the self.”
The second problem that we see in Sullivan’s work is in how he formulates the
role of language as merely the handmaid of the collective’s “me.” Language, we

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think, has other purposes than slavishly serving what Mead calls “the generalized
other.‘“3 Sullivan writes:
The beauty of written language and, in some degree, the charm of spoken
language consist not in anything inherent in linguistic processes or language
symbols, but in the fact that in our learning of language, in our observance
of language behavior, and in our successful formulation of foresights to impress
if not to intimidate our teachers, our wives, and our friends, we are depending
on that group processes which I call “consensual validation.“4
“Consensual validation” refers to Mead’s generalized other. Society, according to
Sullivan, expects language to defer to the principle of “consensual validation.” In
contrast, Burke believes that there is much that is inherent in linguistic processes
and language symbols, and therein lies “the beauty of written language” and “the
charm of spoken language.” While Sullivan accounts for why people afflicted with
schizophrenia are treated as pariahs (they do not comply with the norm of
“consensual validation’), he takes for granted a limited concept of what language
is in social discourse.
IS T
HE CL
INICAL CONT
E
XT IN IT
SE
L
F IMPOR
T
ANT F
OR
UNDE
R
ST
ANDING T
HE CHAR
ACT
E
R
OF SCHIZOPHR
E
NIC L
ANGUAGE
?
A third study that helps us to outline the position that we present is Norman
Cameron’s “Reason, Regression and Communication in Schizophrenics”published
in 1938.25Cameron’s study is noteable in the way that it rejects the assumption
that was popular at the time of his publication which said that schizophrenia is
the regression of the human psyche back to its childhood state. Cameron provides
empirical evidence to dismiss the psychoanalytic view that the disorders
schizophrenia causes are evidence of regression. Cameron writes:
We shall see in our own results that, at least functionally considered, increasing
disorganization does not result in the schizophrenic adult’s retracing in the
reverse direction those phases which characterized the development of his
reasoning in childhood. There is little evidence to be gathered through a study
of causal reasoning and antithetical relations in schizophrenia to support the
assumption that one is witnessing a “peeling”; the disorganization seems to be
really a process of disintegration rather than one of delamination.26
Using the model of Jean Piaget’s work on the development of reasoning skills
in the child, Cameron shows that, from a cognitive perspective, the person afflicted
with schizophrenia, in contrast to a child, is a mature, reasoning, self-conscious
human being. It is important not to forget this insight.
A second reason that we find Cameron’s work worth mentioning is because of
its sensitivity to the complexity of schizophrenic language, and this feature of
Cameron’s study allows an easy linkage to the work of Burke on symbolic action.

7. A Sociological Hermeneutics for Schizophrenic Language 117
With sophisticated concepts like “asyndetic thinking,” “metonymic distortion,” and
“interpenetration of themes,” Cameron recounts how the language of
schizophrenics both privileges and distorts the poetic meaning of language.
When semantic meaning is secondary, the issue of validity with respect to
comprehension is raised. On what basis does one attain a testable grasp of another’s
poetic use of language? Burke provides an accessible and reasonable answer, and
his answer identifies what keeps most empiricists from addressing this realm of
social interaction.
Hence, for the validity of “poetic” meanings, I should suggest that the “test”
cannot be a formal one, as with the diagrams for testing a syllogism. Poetic
characterizations do not categorically exclude each other in the either-true-or-
false sense .... The test of a metaphor’s validity is of a much more arduous
sort, requiring nothing less than the filling-out, by concrete body, of the
characterizations which one would test. There is no formal procedure ....27
Burke is not alone in pointing out this task for sociological inquiry.
And the essence of a symbol is first that its importance, value or meaning is
not inherent in the intrinsic properties of the symbol itself, but in the thing
symbolized, which is by definition something else; secondly, that in so far as
it is a symbol it has no intrinsic causal connection to its meaning, the thing
it symbolizes, but looked at in such terms the relation between them is arbitrary,
conventional.28
If symbols, as Talcott Parsons says, have no intrinsic causal connection to their
meaning, is schizophrenic language so qualitatively different from nonschizophrenic
language? The relation between a symbol and what it symbolizes, Parsons says,
is arbitrary and conventional. No positivistic test (no semantically governed
procedure) can adequately account for the substance of what the symbol symbolizes.
This point applies equally to the symbolic action of people afflicted and not afflicted
with schizophrenia.
Although a committed empiricist who employs formal tests, Cameron follows
Burke’s above recommendation in the narration of his data. Cameron “fills out”
the intersubjective meaningfulness that undergirds the poetic characteristics of the
language that his experiments generate from people afflicted with schizophrenia.
Cameron cites and then explains one of his examples:
Case 16 says the wind blows “due to velocity.” (Why does the wind blow?) “Due
to loss of air, evaporation of water.” (What gives it the velocity?) “The contact
of trees, of air in the trees.”
Again, the result, however inadequately put together, is not a random product.
The phenomena appealed to are those commonly experienced directly or
indirectly in connection with wind,-velocity, loss of air, evaporation, contact
of trees, air in the trees. The form is not unlike that found among children;
but the vague reference to other atmospheric changes bears the stamp of the
wider experience that obviously belongs to a more mature phase of life.29

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Cameron continues this filling out procedure that Burke says is the only adequate
way to validate one’s comprehension of the poetic meaning of another’s language
with the following account:
What can we conclude from these results? First of all, our material shows
surprisingly little real irrelevance. It is evident that even when dealing with
hypothetical and very abstract matters in problems imposed from without, our
schizophrenic patients show for the most part a prevailing tendency to stick
to the subject. While their attempts do not satisfactorily dispose of the problem,
their content hovers around it. The answers are by no means sheer nonsense
as may at first glance have appeared to be the case. The relatedness of the
material is, however, often very distant, the restriction to the problem is loose
and too inclusive, and the clarity referred to above does not imply precision.
In short we find the schizophrenic offering, in place of an integrated functional
whole, something that is a collection of fragments.30
This account of schizophrenic language is objective and humane.
The one problem that we find in Cameron’s study is that Cameron engages in
no reflective understanding of the significance of the interviewer’s questions which
are meant to test the cognitive strengths and reasoning skills of the schizophrenic
patient vis-a-vis the child. That is, there is no analysis of how the interviewer’s
questions (which are constructed so as to create anxious issues and abstract
problems) are themselves linguistic acts subject to symbolic interpretation.
For example, What is it to ask someone afflicted with schizophrenia the following
questions?
Why does the wind blow? Why is your hair brown? Why does the sun come
up in the morning? How does a fish live in water? Why did the man fall down
in the street? How does your body make a shadow? Why are you alive? Why
are you good?”
What do these questions that test a person’s skills at conceptual formation have
in common? What language game is the patient being asked to play? What criteria
does the experimental psychologist have and use to measure a successful as opposed
to an unsuccessful achievement in this game? In response to the question “Why
is your hair fair?“, what makes “Because I inherited it from my parents” a successful
answer and “Because of something else; it’s on my head; it comes from my mother”
an unsuccessful answer?32 What criteria legitimates the first reply and disqualifies
the second?
The criteria is the preference for semantic meaning, which privileges clarity,
precision, and naming, as what demonstrates linguistic competence. This criteria,
however, suppresses a superior notion. Linguistic competence, as we have already
stated, is the awareness of the qualitative difference between semantic and poetic
meaning and the appreciation of the lively interplay between the two. Humor in
fact exemplifies this notion of linguistic competence.

9. A Sociological Hermeneutics for Schizophrenic Language 119
A discovery, for example, occurs when it suddenly becomes plain that a message
was not only metaphoric but also more literal, or vice versa. That is to say,
the explosive moment in humor is the moment when the labeling of the mode
undergoes a dissolution or resynthesis.33
The enjoyment of humor is the recognition of a qualitative difference between the
semantic and poetic mode of language and an appreciation of the dialectical
interplay between the two. This notion of linguistic competence is not an esoteric
one.
WHAT IS WOR
T
H PR
E
SE
R
VING F
R
OM BAT
E
SON’S WOR
K
ON SCHIZOPHR
E
NIC L
ANGUAGE
?
It is important that we not neglect a discussion of Gregory Bateson’s Double-bind
theory which, when initially published in 1956, was conceived of as a valid causal
explanation of schizophrenia. Bateson and coauthors argued that schizophrenia
is produced socially in a family setting in which a child experiences pathological
communication from his or her parents. The character of this pathological
communication is the oppressive and unhealthy interaction that it establishes for
the vulnerable, dependent child. “If you do x, you will be punished; if you do not
do x, you will be punished.” To experience these double messages with nihilistic
foundations repeatedly and inescapably leads, Bateson argues, to the development
of a “weak ego function,” which Bateson characterizes this way:
... the term “ego function” ... is precisely the process of discriminating
communicational modes either within the self or between the self and others.
The schizophrenic exhibits weakness in three areas of such function: (a) He has
difficulty in assigning the correct communicational mode to the messages he
receives from other persons. (b) He has difficulty in assigning the correct
communicational mode to those messages which he himself utters or emits
nonverbally. (c) He has difficulty in assigning the correct communicational mode
to his own thoughts, sensations, and percepts.34
For Bateson and his coauthors, the patient’s use of schizophrenia language is a
symptom of the person’s weak-ego function. The symptomalogy might take the
following form in social interaction: “The schizophrenic feels so terribly on the spot
at all times that he habitually responds with a defensive insistence on the literal
level when it is quite inappropriate, e.g., when someone is joking.“35 The reverse
can also occur; that is, the patient responds metaphorically to a literal question,
so metaphorically that the listener hears the response as delusional.36
While “metaphor,” Bateson writes, “is an indispensable tool of thought and
expression-a characteristic of all human communication, even of that of the
scientist, . . . the peculiarity of the schizophrenic is not that he uses metaphors, but
that he uses unlabeled metaphors.‘J7 An unlabeled metaphor, Bateson says, is one
for which there seems to be no intelligible grounding in something like as the history
of the patient, the social environment, empirical reality, or reason.

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Drawing upon Burke’s work on the symbolic character of language in social
interaction, we can easily see how Bateson’s arguments continue to stand as an
insightful description, albeit flawed causal explanation, of schizophrenic language.38
Bateson’s term “unlabeled metaphor” is a gloss; the term does not by itself
differentiate adequately between the poetic meaningfulness of a schizophrenic’s
language and a nonschizophrenic’s language. When, for instance, someone not
afflicted with schizophrenia uses an unlabeled metaphor, the listener simply trusts
that there is a semantic element that underpins the unlabeled metaphor. The listener
asks for clarification (What do you mean?) or lives with the confusion. By way
of contrast, when someone with schizophrenia uses an unlabeled metaphor, the
listener distrusts that there is any semantic element undergirding the schizophrenic’s
language. The person is judged crazy or mad.
We can cite instances, however, in which there is a legitimate and socially
sanctioned place for what Bateson calls unlabeled metaphors. Consider the popular
nursery rhyme-“Hey, diddle, diddle / The cat and the fiddle / The cow jumped
over the moon / The little dog laughed to see such sport / And the dish ran away
with the spoon.” Is there a labelled metaphor in this nursery rhyme? Could we not
say that the pleasure (or displeasure for some) of the nursery rhyme is its
presentation of a series of unlabeled metaphors? The child identifies with “the little
dog who laughs at such sport,” where the sport is the rhyme’s purely poetic, that
is, purely nonsemantic, use of language. The semantic meaning of the rhyme is that
no semantic meaning is intended. Notice that this use of unlabeled metaphor does
not render the rhyme’s language uncommunicative or asocial.
For an adult example of this point, consider the popular radio comedy heard
every morning on National Public Radio called “Dr. Science.” The humor of “Dr.
Science” is to simulate cleverly bizarre paradigm shifts, craziness, disorderly
thought, bogus logic, and unintelligibility. Insofar as the audience, however, laughs
and enjoys this comedy, there is meaningfulness and social understanding. “The
explosive moment in humor is the moment when the labeling of the mode [semantic
or poetic] undergoes a dissolution or resynthesis.‘“’
The matter with which we take issue in Bateson’s work is the claim that people
afflicted with schizophrenia are incapable of making discriminations at the level
of metacommunication. There is abundant evidence in the literature that the person
afflicted with schizophrenia is competent, quite competent, in this regard; we even
believe that the person afflicted with schizophrenia, like most oppressed social
actors, is often more aware of the metacommunication in a social interaction than
the nonschizophrenic. For example, it is painful to watch a person afflicted with
schizophrenia being interviewed on a TV documentary like “Frontline” or “48
Hours”-the afflicted person seems more in tune to the metacommunication of the
interaction than the interviewer. The afflicted person is sensitive, if not overly
sensitive, to the banality of the interviewer’s questions, the hidden agenda in the
interviewer’s false “gemeinshaft,” the contravening effect of the observing camera,
the ill-timed interruptions, the sympathetic but unrealistic assumptions in the
interviewer’s questions, and so on.
To consider the point in a clinical setting, listen to the following descriptions
of linguistic interactions in Joseph Richman’s study “Symbolic Distortion in the

11. A Sociologica/ Hermeneutics for Schizophrenic Language 121
Vocabulary Definitions of Schizophrenics.“’ Listen to how the afflicted person is
speaking poetically as much as he or she is speaking semantically. Subjects of the
study were asked to define certain words, that is, give the semantic meaning of
words, and here are the results. “Suicide. ‘Without meaning at all. It has no
meaning.“” Is this answer an expression of ignorance (semantically understood
by the interviewer) or is it a poetic response to the interviewer’s question?
“Zntercourse. ‘It’s the relationship of a species in order to recreate.” Is this
description a parody of the task to be performed? Would anyone define
“intercourse” without a certain amount of anxiety? “Caress. ‘Caress is to have in
complete control. Have the situation in hand.“d3 Notice the transition from a poetic
to a semantic definition of the word. “Suicide. ‘Jumping to a conclusion.“64 Could
this response be an example of a joke rather than the subject’s failure to comply
with the interviewer’s task? Is it possible to hear the subjects afflicted with
schizophrenia in this study as responding seriously and sometimes ironically to the
banal task of providing semantic definitions for everyday words?
Unlike Bateson, R. D. Laing recognizes the sensitivity of people diagnosed
schizophrenic to the metacommunication of a social interaction and sees this
sensitivity as so superior to the nonschizophrenic’s that the schizophrenic’s use of
language is tantamount to high-minded mockery and clever parody, which goes
completely undetected by the normal observer, who is often a physician.45
Bateson’s descriptions of schizophrenic language sensitize us to the social
character of schizophrenic language, but Bateson’s clinical explanation does not
provide the sociological understanding that we seek. In a popular book titled
Welcome Silence Carol North narrates her personal experiences and life history
as someone who was afflicted with schizophrenia.46 She describes many
interpersonal problems that she experienced in social interaction because she was
unable to make accurate discriminations of either her own or another’s
metacommunication. To explain these problems as the symptom of a weak ego
function, however, strikes us as flawed. When haunted by powerful hallucinations,
North was still able to excel at the University level, sustain interpersonal
relationships, and pass one year of medical school. The one thing that Welcome
Silence does show is that throughout her affliction North’s ego function remained
strong.
Schizophrenia is viewed by the medical community as incurable, but North was
one of a fortunate few who unexplainably benefited from kidney dialysis, an
experimental but risky treatment for schizophrenia that is no longer used. North
now is a practicing psychiatrist affiliated with Washington University School of
Medicine in St. Louis.
DO PE
OPL
E SUF
F
E
R
ING F
R
OM SCHIZOPHR
E
NIA
L
IVE IN A SE
PAR
AT
E WOR
L
D?
There have been few recent studies of schizophrenic language. One exception is
a sophisticated linguistic study by Janusz Wrobel titled Language and
Schizophrenic.47 It is worth noting Wrobel’s “sociological” conclusions and stating
how we differ. Wrobel writes, “A schizophrenic moves freely in time and space;

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his or her time is not linear and space is not homogeneous.“* It is true that someone
suffering from schizophrenia does not relate to time and space in a normative
fashion, but, given what it means to be a human being, someone afflicted with
schizophrenia remains subject to time and space. A person afflicted with
schizophrenia is an empirical being, that is, someone dependent upon time and
space.
In general, Wrobel argues that people afflicted with schizophrenia live in another
perceptual and linguistic world, a world that cannot be described as social because
it is essentially unshareable. The world of people afflicted with schizophrenia is
other to society.
Misunderstandings with schizophrenics arise not from objective incoherences
and semantic errors (moreover, usually analyzed from the point of view of the
semantics of common language) but from the existence of a separate,
schizophrenic, semantic system.49
We fully agree with Wrobel’s description but sharply disagree with his
explanation. We take the measure of linguistic competence for those afflicted and
not afflicted with schizophrenia to be the same. Linguistic competence involves the
recognition of a qualitative difference between semantic and poetic meaning and
an appreciation of the dialectical interplay between the two. The principle holds
for all language users. While the semantic reality of someone suffering from
schizophrenia may be quite distinct from someone not suffering from schizophrenia,
the person’s relation to his or her semantic reality (even while psychotic) is a self-
conscious one. What is crucial is not the reality per se, a positivistic concern, but
the actor’s self-conscious relation to that reality, a hermeneutical concern.
We think that Wrobel inflates the pariah status of people suffering from
schizophrenia and, in so doing, minimizes the experience of schizophrenia. We share
something with those who suffer from schizophrenia; we share what it means to
be a human being in society. The sociological study of how people afflicted with
schizophrenia exemplify human character teaches us all something about ourselves.
CONCLUSION
The position of this study is that the basis for the schizophrenic patient’s status
as pariah in social interaction is grounded in the nonschizophrenic’s
misunderstanding of the symbolic action of those afflicted with schizophrenic.
Burke’s intelligent and humane work on the symbolic use of language by all human
actors suggests constructive ways for readdressing this matter. Burke helps us to
see how the interactions between people afflicted with schizophrenia and people
not afflicted are social and how people suffering from schizophrenia are motive-
guided actors. Without a sociology to interpret the social foundation of the
interactions between schizophrenics and nonschizophrenics, sociology cannot serve
society’s larger interest in supporting, rehabilitating, and understanding this sadly
misunderstood and alienated population.

13. A Sociological Hermeneutics for Schizophrenic Language 123
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
NOT
E
S
Today causal explanations of schizophrenia are the exclusive domain of neurology.
The nature rather than nurture explanation of schizophrenia is the hegemonic one
in medical research and health care, although there has been some reconsideration
of social variables from within the purview of the neurological explanation. See E.
Fuller Torrey, Surviving Schizophrenia: A Family Manual, revised ed. (New York:
Harper & Row, 1988); Nancy C. Andreason, l7re Broken Brain: The Biological
Revolution in Psychiatry (New York: Harper 8z Row, 1984); Schizophrenia Research
Branch, Schizophrenia: Questions and Answers (Rockville, MD: National Institute
of Mental Health, 1986); and Irving I. Gottesman, Schizophrenia Genesis: The Origins
of Madness (New York: W. H. Freeman and Company 1991).
Talcott Parsons, 7&e Social System (Glencoe: Free Press, 1951), p. 430.
The narrative employs the first-person, plural “we” because the study was written with
the help of two undergraduate research assistants; I would like to thank Amy Crook
and Maureen Leonard for their support and thoughtful contributions to this study.
See Alan Blum and Peter McHugh, “The Social Ascription of Motives,” American
Sociological Review, 36 (1971):98-109; C. Wright Mills, “Situated Actions and
Vocabularies of Motive,” American Sociological Review, 5 1940):904-913; and
Kenneth Burke, A Grammar of Motives (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1974).
For a listing of Kenneth Burke’s writing, see Kenneth Burke, On Symbols and Society,
ed. and with an Introduction by Joseph R. Gusfield (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1989), pp. 319-320.
Joseph R. Gusfield, Introduction to On Symbols and Society by Kenneth Burke, ed.
Joseph R. Gusfield (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), p. 11.
Kenneth Burke, “Semantic and Poetic Meaning” in fie Philosophy of Literary Form
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973), pp. 138-67.
Ibid., p. 141.
Ibid., p. 150.
Ibid., p. 144.
“‘Action’ is a term for the kind of behavior possible to a typically symbol-using animal
(such as man) in contrast with the extrasymbolic or nonsymbolic operations of nature”
(Burke, On Symbols and Society, p. 53).
For the demonstration of this hermeneutics through an analysis of everyday
interactions, see Keith Doubt, “A Burkean Hermeneutics for Understanding the Social
Character of Schizophrenic Language,” Symbolic Interaction, 17(1994):129-146.
Roy H. Wolcott, “Schizophrenese: A Private Language,” Journal of Health and Social
Behavior, 15 (1974): 126-134.
Ibid., p. 126.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 133.
Susan Baur, 7&e Dinosaur Man: Tales of Madness and Enchantment from the
Backward (New York: Harper Perennial, 1991), p. 73.
Harry Stack Sullivan, “The Language of Schizophrenia” in Language and Thought
in Schizophrenia, edited by J.S. Kasanin (New York: Norton, 1964), pp. 4-15. Torrey
uses ad hominem to dissuade readers from either looking at or taking seriously
Sullivan’s writing.
Sullivan was enamored with Freud’s theory that failure of attachment to
the mother in childhood led to unconscious homosexuality and paranoid

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schizophrenia; Sullivan himself was “dominated by an unhappy, indulgent
mother,” was “a homosexual who wished to be a heterosexual,” and almost
certainly experienced multiple episodes of schizophrenia (Torrey, p. 162).
We understand and sympathize with Torrey’s need to protect innocent families who
have members afflicted with schizophrenia from suffering unnecessary pain and guilt
that is caused by misinformation on what schizophrenia is, but we do not endorse
the means with which Torrey provides this protection. There are better ways to do
a critique than ad hominem.
19. Sullivan, p. 13.
20. George Herbert Mead, Mind, Self & Society: From the Standpoint of a Social
Behaviorist, ed. with Introduction by Charles W. Morris (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1934), pp. 164-222.
21. R. D. Laing insightfully writes:
There is still an ‘I’ that cannot find a ‘me’. An ‘I’ has not ceased to exist,
but it is without substance, it is disembodied, it lacks the quality of
realness, and it has no identity, it has no ‘me’ to go with it.. .. without
such a last shred or scrap of a self, an ‘I’ therapy of any kind would be
impossible. There seems insufficient reason to believe that there is not
such a last shred in any patient who can talk .. (R. D. Laing, The Divided
Self An Existential Study of Sanity and Madness [Middlesex, England:
Penguin Books, 19651,p. 172).
22. See Keith Doubt, “Mead’s Theory of Self and Schizophrenia” Social Science Journal,
29 (1992):307-321.
23. Mead, pp. 154-163.
24. Sullivan, p. 13.
25. Norman Cameron, “Reason, Regression and Communication in Schizophrenics” in
Psychological Monographs, Vol. 50, edited by John F. Dashiell (Columbus, OH:
American Psychological Association, 1938).
26. Ibid., p. 6.
27. Burke, “Semantic and Poetic,” p. 91.
28. Talcott Parsons, 7%eStructure of Social Action: A Study in Social Theory with Special
Reference to a Group of Recent European Writers, Vol. 1 (New York: Free Press,
1968), p. 416.
29. Cameron, p. 16.
30. Ibid., pp. 17-18.
31. Ibid., pp. 14-27 passim.
32. Ibid., p. 19.
33. Gregory Bateson, Don D. Jackson, Jay Haley, and John Weakland, “Toward a Theory
of Schizophrenia” in Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology,
Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology, edited by Gregory Bateson (San Francisco:
Chadler, 1972) p. 203.
34. Ibid., p. 205.
35. Ibid., p. 209.
36. On the study of the poetic character of schizophrenic language, Baur writes:
What I have never seen discussed in the scientific literature on delusions
is their considerable allure.. .. I was unprepared for their charm. Where,
I wondered, was the paper that investigated delusions not as symptoms
but as stories which, whether well wrought or drab, grandiose or grim,
are all messages set adrift from the shores of a cunningly unreasonable
world (Baur, p. 71)?

15. A Sociological Hermeneutics for Schizophrenic Language 125
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
Bateson et al., p. 205.
Torrey says of the Double-bind theory:
The lead author of the original paper describing this theory was Gregory
Bateson, an anthropologist who had undergone Jungian psychoanaly-
sis . ... the inspiration for the “double-bind” came from his studies of
communications theory, cybernetics, rituals among natives in Papua New
Guinea, the communications of dolphins, and Lewis Carroll’s Through
the Looking Glass. No control studies were done and Bateson freely
acknowledged that “this hypothesis has not been statistically tested.” In
fact it never was, and in restrospect the single most important antecedent
of the theory appears to have been the thinking of Lewis Carroll (Torrey,
p, 164).
Again, we acknowledge Torrey’s description of the negative status of the double-bind
theory as a causal explanation of schizophrenia, but we do not respect Torrey’s use
of sarcasm.
Bateson et al., p. 203.
Joseph Richman, “Symbolic Distortion in the Vocabulary Definitions of
Schizophrenics” in Language Behavior in Schizophrenia, edited by Harold J. Vetter
(Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas, 1968), pp. 49-57.
Ibid., p. 51.
Ibid., p. 53.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Laing, pp. 54-105 passim.
Carol North, Welcome Silence (New York: Avon, 1989).
Janusz Wrobel, Language and Schizophrenia (Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publisher,
1990).
Ibid., p. 120.
Ibid., p. 121.