ARTS REPORTING AND THE GRADATION OF ABSTRACTION
Domenica Bongiovanni · ETC.: A Review of General Semantics · 2008
S.I. HAYAKAWA'S DISCUSSION of how people use and react to words in Language in Thought and Action can be applied to explain why classical music journalism has a small readership. Often, the words in these articles describing the fine arts are so high on the ladder of abstraction that many people miss the far-reaching and personal significance of a piece of music. Conversely, performers, composers, historians, and theorists tend to forget that the supposedly rude audience members who clap between movements of a symphony have not had the training they have had. The ideal role of the arts journalist is to be knowledgeable enough about both segments of the population to skillfully reconcile the differences and conjure up enough interest in classical music to expand its narrow audience. By their very nature, artistic works tend to have layered meanings, which makes it hard to write something that captures the high-level abstractions while explaining them in words with more extensional meanings. Hayakawa explains words as falling somewhere on a ladder of abstraction. (pp.84-85) According to him, a word with an extensional meaning be expressed in words because [the definition] is that which the word stands for-or in other words, something that can be at (p.36). He uses the example of Bessie the cow, whose name is at one of the lowest levels on the ladder, and off this, he builds up to a cow, then livestock, farm assets, asset, and finally wealth. (p.85) We can apply the ladder of abstraction to classical music terminology as well. On the bottom rungs lie the sheet music and instruments, which can be at, but neither of which is in itself music. Music is up a few more rungs, and it can be pointed at only when it is sounding. Further up is the time period (Baroque, Classical, Romantic, etc.), and even higher than that are the composer's intentions and emotions that he or she infused the piece with. Reporters writing on classical music often assume readers have a solid knowledge base on the subject and refer to terms that only a few would understand. They rarely say how a violist evokes melancholy by drawing the bow across the string a certain way or how the performance style of a Baroque work differs from a Romantic one. These explanations are on different rungs of abstraction, but they can contribute greatly to understanding the big picture. This point underscores Hayakawa's statement that a word, expression, or even a language cannot express everything about something. (pp.86-87) Definitions, contrary to popular opinion, tell us nothing about things. (p.87) In this same way, no article, no matter how long it is, can fully encompass everything the composer and performers want the audience to understand about a piece of music. But this problem is not unique to music; in the plainest terms, it simply cannot be solved for any topic. This aspect makes asking questions for arts articles problematic as well. During my time as an arts reporter at the Columbia Missourian newspaper, I had trouble phrasing questions about music and getting answers that were not too high or low on the ladder of abstraction, even with my strong background in music. I often received abstract answers that came from a lofty area or seemed not to make any sense. Hayakawa writes that if utterances have no intensional meaning (i.e., using words from higher on the ladder of abstraction), then they amount to meaningless noises (pp.37-38). Likewise, if utterances have no extensional meaning, they can produce endless and futile arguments. (pp.37-38) I often ended up with a lot of fruitless information to sort through after my interviews. In hindsight, I realize that my questions about music were rife with intensional words that were too broad to elicit extensional answers. …