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VOLUME 5, ISSUE 1 PSYCHNEWS INTERNATIONAL July 2000
-- AN ONLINE PUBLICATION --
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SECTION D: ARTICLE
THE LANGUAGE MODEL OF PERSONALITY
AND ITS PERSPECTIVES WITHIN PSYCHOLOGY
Sergey V. Golubkov
I. INTRODUCTION
The notion of personality in psychology is different
from other important psychological notions such as
perception, behavior, motivation, emotions, etc. This
difference is a result of the fact that personality
manifests itself as a category reflecting a special
quality that an individual acquires within the system
of social relations (Leontiev 1975). Its peculiarity
consists in that it is the zone of encounter of various
psychological fields and, thus, it integrates within
itself various subcategories. The building of a working
model of the object of reality personality theory is
a task proportional to its complexity. However, the
significance of building such models that allow to
explain and predict happening to a man (Hjelle & Ziegler
1992) is also great because in everyday life we do not
deal with perception, thought, speech or drives separately,
but with whole personalities - one's own and others'.
At the same time, the situation of building personality
theory in psychology resembles the one described in the
story about the blind men and an elephant: once having met an
elephant they try to tell other people about it. One of them
had examined the elephant's ear and said that the elephant was
like a carpet, another one had faced its trunk and compared the
animal to a flexible tube, and the third one having touched its
leg claimed that the elephant was mighty and firm as a column
as a result, though each one of them was sure to know something
about the elephant, all of them were equally away from the truth.
The situation of personality research in psychology is like the
one in this story in a way because every researcher for this or
that reason pays attention to a specific part of the whole
personality and assumes it to be the whole.
At present there are two basic approaches to personality
description and building its model: literary and psychological or,
in a wider sense, the method of arts and the one of science
(Allport 1968). Each of them has its own merits and drawbacks.
For instance, the first descriptive method captures an
integral, consistent picture of personality, even though it
is subjective. The second one often represents personality
as a set of objective facts which, however, are sometimes
hard to put together to form an integral picture. In other
words, we believe that there is a certain contradiction
between the integrity of a personality image in a theory and
the degree of its scientific verifiability: the more integral
the object in a personality theory, the less it is a
"scientific" theory and visa versa. Thus, the personality
theories, mainly by S. Freud, C. Jung and C. Rogers, in
our opinion, present themselves as the most integral; at
the same time these very same theories are no well
scientifically verified (which does not prevent them from
being successfully employed in psychological practice).
The contrary position might be taken by theories such
as of B. Skinner, R. Cattell or J. Rotter. Therefore, the
following question comes up here: can we unify the two
methods to acquire by this a more holistic "grasp" of
the object of social reality on one hand, and describe
it scientifically on the other hand?
II. BASIC ARGUMENTS
As we see it, there is such an opportunity and it
opens up once we refer to human language as the reflection
of human consciousness (mind). In this particular case,
language is understood not as the environment determining
the consciousness contents as in the Sapir-Whorf
linguistic relativity hypothesis, but it is viewed
as the reflection of human practice. As is known, there
is a clear correlation between the diversity of activities
and the complexity of the language serving these activities
(Prudkov 1999). To put it otherwise, the language system
reflects and collects within itself the "multicenturied"
experience of of people in the process of their social
activity (Apresyan 1995) and, consequently, it can serve
as a reliable guide to the sphere of human interaction
with the objective reality.
There is an integral model of reality imprinted
in the language, the one that coincides with the
real-life activities of people and, thus, it has
been "naturally verified" to be true to actual experience.
The model of reality is traditionally called "primitive";
that, however, does not not mean that it is incorrect,
but of non-scientific origin. Alternatively, scientific
models are often built as a result of transcending such
a natural order of things by means of specially
thought-out experiments and specially designed
instruments, but people in their everyday life unconsciously
do not use them, rather they continue using the metaphorical
primitive models and schemes (Lakoff & Johnson 1980).
Returning to the metaphor about the blind and the
elephant, we may state that if the blind men were
numerous enough and if they kept on researching
the elephant for ages, they would, no doubt,
come up with a true impression of the animal.
Through linguistic reconstruction we can approach
the restoration of a whole and, at the same time
discover in it an ontological niches hierarchy that
man is not aware of in the routine of the day
(Feuodorov 1995). But our task is not so global
as we are only interested in the model of just one
side of reality personality. Because the system
quality of an individual is objectively manifested
within social relations, personality must also have
its imprint in the system of language. Its linguistic
reconstruction can yield a fairly objective and, what
is more, a useful personality representation.
It is no accident that we speak specifically
about personality model reconstruction and not about
personality theory. The latter notion is much broader
in meaning. Apart from representations of the basic
components of personality and their interrelations,
a personality theory as a minimal requirement must
be able to explain the logic of personality development,
its change with time and, further, the issues of
pathological and healthy personality and his/her
psychotherapy (Hjelle & Ziegler 1992). Hence, restoring
the model from the language system allows us to use it
as the basis to build a personality theory.
Our language model of personality reconstruction
includes three main stages. The first one is the
research and use of contemporary data such as on
primitive psychology, the language personality model
in linguistics and ethnology. The second one consists
of discovering the immanent "systemity" of the data
and restoring an internally consistent personality
model applicable to the sphere of psychological practice.
And, third, testing the resulting model for its psychological
validity is called for. Fortunately, today there is a great
number of works devoted to the reality reflection by
language (Weirzbicka 1992; Zaliznyak 1992; Soukalenko
1992; Likhachev 1993; Dmitrovskaya 1988; Apresyan 1995),
that we can employ instead of conducting a lexicographical
investigation for the semantic primitives of human image
ourselves. As the base primitives, we will use the those
by U. D. Apresyan (1995, 355) who has outlined such
components in the primitive image of human being as
perception (sight, hearing, sensations of smell, taste
and touch), physiological states (hunger, thirst, need,
pain), physiological reactions (to pale, to quiver,
to give the creeps, to flush, to get hot, to sweat),
bodily actions (to work, to go, to stand, to lay,
to throw), wishes (to wish, to strive, to tempt,
to prefer, to intend), intellect (to think, to recall,
to imagine, to be aware, to understand), feelings (fear,
to rejoice, to love, to hate, despair), and speech (to
inform, to promise, to ask, to demand, to order, to
respond).
With this list, we can proceed to the next
stage of reconstructing the language model of
personality clarifying the components' interrelations
and their immanent systemity. U. D. Apresyan (1995, 364)
divides the components into those related mainly to
the human body activity and those related to the
activity of human mind. Both categories (body, mind)
each possess four components of the language image
of an individual so that the whole set of them can
be represented as a system of four binary oppositions:
perceptions intellect
physiological states (needs) intentions
physiological reactions (emotions) feelings
bodily actions speech actions
We have come to the conclusion that the
components system contains some other types of
regularities and they -- like the "body-mind"
rule -- form in a natural way four other binary
oppositions. There are two additional types of
regularities in the system that can be denoted
as "intra-interpersonal activity" and "objectivity-
subjectivity". The oppositions formed according the
first of them are the following:
intellect speech
perceptions bodily actions
intentions, wishes feelings
physiological states (needs) physiological reactions (emotions)
The second type of relations between components
"objectivity-subjectivity" results in the following pairs:
intellect intentions
speech feelings
perceptions needs
bodily actions emotional reactions
In summary, we can speak about a three-dimensional personality
model that can be presented in the following table:
INTRAPERSONAL INTERPERSONAL
MIND intellect intentions feelings speech
BODY perceptions needs emotions actions
OBJECTIVE SUBJECTIVE OBJECTIVE
Another important step in the language personality
model reconstruction is to verify its psychological
validity (its reliability has already been ascertained
by "multicenturied" daily use): it is important that the
model reflects precisely the object that it claims to
reflect personality. This can be done by fitting
widely used models of personality to the language model.
In contemporary personology there are quite few
personality theories that have clearly outlined a
structural basis, particularly the theories by
S. Freud and C. Jung. The authors not only highlight
the main constituent parts of personality but also
point to the regularities in their relations.
The personality structure by S. Freud (1961)
includes three instances the id, the ego and the
super-ego. The id represents a "chaotic cauldron" of
mobile energy; it may be considered as the primitive,
instinctual and biological aspects of personality that
can be characterized by impulsiveness and irrationality,
and it functions according to the pleasure principle.
The super-ego, on the contrary, represents the system
of internalized social rules, values and behavioral
standards. The ego first becomes the regulating instance
that functions by the reality principle and it facilitates
satisfaction of the id's needs in the real world by adapting
the id's wild nature, firstly, with the requirements of
objective reality and, secondly, with the super-ego's ones.
Now let us compare the structural model under consideration
with the language personality model in the following table
showing that the former, having less differentiated
components, can rather peacefully find its place within the
categorial space of the latter one:
? ?
SECONDARY the ego the super-ego the ego
PRIMARY the ego the id the ego
REALITY PLEASURE REALITY
The personality structure by C. Jung (1969) is even more
detailed. It includes four psychic function types thought,
feeling, sensation and intuition each of which is directed
both to the external (extroversion) and the internal reality
(introversion). As a result, thought is employed to build up
rational statements as well as for argument. Feeling
represents the function that is employed both to evaluate
and express judgement. Sensation is responsible both for
rational, realistic perception of the external reality and
acting in it. And intuition for delicate listening to
the internal reality and its regulation. Now let us compare
Jung's understanding of personality structure with the
language model in the following table:
INTROVERSION EXTROVERSION
RATIONALITY thought feeling feeling thought
IRRATIONALITY sensation intuition intuition sensation
? ? ?
As an example of less differentiated personality
structures we can look at models by C. Rogers, J. Kelly,
A. Bandura, J. Rotter, A. Maslow, B. Skinner, G. Allport,
G. Eysenck and many others. In J. Kelly's model, for instance,
personality is a system of bipolar and dichotomic constructs
that in fact are not the components of the system's structure -
rather they are the relating principles between whatever its
components. The conceptions by B. Skinner and A. Bandura use
the "internal-external" dichotomy, A. Maslow in his personality
model outlines the two main components physiological and
growth needs. R. Cattell describes personality with the help
of his 16-factor model as a result of which, in our opinion,
personality loses its internal integral character. In the
model by C. Rogers (1961) one can find such structural
elements as perception, ideal self, organismic valuing
process and interaction with others. G. Eysenck
(1970) describes personality in three orthogonal dimensions
without pointing out any structural components: "introversion -
extroversion", "super-ego strength - psychotism",
"stability - instability".
Concludingly, we state that the language personality
model's validity can be confirmed to a great extent
because the model manifests itself mostly as the
metamodel for the "rest", finding room for them within
its boundaries without any substantial contradictions.
Among the rare exceptions there might be the models by
R. Cattell and J. Kelly, both of which hardly fit the
language personality model.
III. IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PERSONALITY MODEL
In conclusion let us pay attention to the potentials
of the language personality model. First of all, as we
have said before, it provides an opportunity to build on
its basis a personality theory adequate to the everyday
practice of human interaction. The language personality
theory might be the subject of a special article, here
we can only focus on a series of questions that remain
to be answered to build such a theory:
a) What are the logic and stages of the language personality
structure forming and changing with time?
b) What are the determinants of its changes?
c) How with the help of the model can a healthy and pathological
personality be described?
d) How from the model's viewpoint can a therapeutical process
be understood and explained?
Other potentials pertain to psychological counseling
and psychotherapy. A therapist, adhering to a particular
approach, has to use a certain model of personality in his/
her work, which results in the following: first, the
therapist sooner or later finds him/herself within the
system of ideas of that same approach, second, he/she begins
to see him/herself and the clients in terms of that approach's
personality model and, third, consciously or not he/she
"converts" the clients into the same understanding of man
in an overgeneralized way. The conscious use of the language
personality model in psychotherapeutic practice allows to
guide the process of human interaction in a more natural
way.
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Sergey V. Golubkov is research assistant at the Research Center for
Communicative Foreign Languages Teaching at Lipetsk Teachers' Training
State Institute, Russia. He also works as a counseling psychologist
at the local psycho-counseling service "Dialogue". His major research
interests include counseling and developmental psychology and,
in particular, the process of personality changes through interpersonal
communication and speech interaction.
His email address is s_golubkov@mail.ru
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