Reading Tom Wolfe's Kingdom of Speech got me thinking about what language is and why it is. I'm still poking the question in my head, but here's what I've come up with so far.
Animals definitely communicate. A bird will emit a mating call when in the grips of some sexual compulsion. Bees fly/dance over a flower in a certain pattern when there's a rich trove of pollen.
But these are binary communications. If the stimulus is there then you make the sound or gesture. If it isn't, you don't.
Human language isn't binary. It's very flexible. A word can mean more than one thing. There are levels of meaning. You can marshal statements to a common purpose.
So what happens to us if language loses its flexibility? What if speech is so restricted that there are only a few subjects you can address, and then you can only certain pre-approved thing? What separates us from the animals then?
Simple. In animal communication the limits are set by nature, and are meant to help the creature survive. Restricted human speech does none of that.
2 comments:
You're correct that animals communicate but don't appear to have any type of complex language - at least as far as we can possibly know. I still wonder about the crows I see muttering together on the wires outside our bedroom window. Then there are the whales.. Nevertheless, language is definitely a major facet of human civilization and one I'm not really fit to discuss at any length.
I did find one very interesting article about the philosopher Charles Taylor, a man who had more knowledgeable views about human language. Here's a quote from Philosophy Now in a review of his book 'The Language Animal':
"As language animals we live in, and by means of, metaphors, and every language requires its own metaphorical range."
That's just a sample of his exposition that goes on to discuss how our individual cultures dispose us to think and relate to one another.
As far as language losing its flexibility, that is a problem complicated by modern communication systems. Restrictions against saying particular things don't stop people from thinking them and finding ways to communicate with others who feel the same way. It's kind of interesting that in considering outside constraints on what we can discuss, the word 'Orwellian' describes the idea in the fewest words possible.
No doubt my definition is somewhat stylized. I'm essentially speaking as a layman as well. Still, as far as a working definition of languages as it's used by humans, I think it works. I'm not really prepared to say much about whales other than that they illustrate the unexpected directions that life can take, having as they do an evolutionary background as petite quadrupeds. Crows are crows. I have difficulty deciding what to say about them, other than that I find their presence in the sky and trees reassuring.
Taylor seems to be a pretty interesting thinker. His stance against scientific reductionism in discussing humans--and I admit that I'm getting this from the review, not having read his work directly--is quite wise and at this time very timely. And I'd agree that language is something we grow up within, rather than something we can take apart atomistically. Learning the bits and pieces of language is part of how we acquire it as children, but not the whole story.
Common usage of the adjective "Orwellian" seems to have started around the time of Eric Arthur Blair's death. It's a very useful word. 1984 is one of the definitive portrayals of how language is policed and manipulated in order to control the citizens' thoughts. He wrote about this elsewhere as well. One thing that seems to be true is that utopian philosophies can turn bad very quickly, and on either side they are very concerned with language.
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