Language: Our magic tool

F rom the time we wake up in the morning right up to bedtime, there is this magic tool of communication that we use almost incessantly during our waking hours: language. And this is one tool that is available to one and all, regardless of age, sex, level of education or social standing. Language is so much a part of us that we rarely stop to think of how fantastic a means of communication it is and how easily and effortlessly we acquire the ability to use language. And yet, the fact remains that without being aware of it, a child’s ability to use language comes from its imitation of the speech of others heard over and over again in different contexts and stored away in some corner of its brain. And the urge to imitate the speech of good speakers stays us practically all through our lives. Acquiring the written form of language comes a little later when we start going to school. This is, in a way, is a replication of how languages evolve. It is the spoken form of language that is used first of all and the written form generally evolves much later.  The majority of languages in the world do not have writing systems. It is a common mistake is to regard languages without scripts (alphabets or other devices for writing like ideograms as in the case of Chinese and Japanese) as dialects. Dialects are actually the variant forms of a language that are spoken in different parts of the region where the language is spoken. “A dialect of a language is the form of it used by a geographical or social sub-section of its speakers,” as Barbara Strang puts it.  For instance, in the case of English, one speaks of Liverpudlian and Cockney as the different varieties of the same English language spoken in Liverpool and London. It is not really very difficult for the speaker of one dialect of a language to follow someone speaking a different dialect of the same language. Likewise, in the case of Assamese, the dialect used by people in lbari is quite distinctly different from the dialect used in Sivasagar or Golaghat. And yet, people from different parts of Assam have no difficulty in understanding each other despite the different dialects of Assamese they use. Most languages have what is called a ‘standard colloquial form’—the form that would be used for radio and television broadcasts. In the case of English, this standard colloquial form is referred to normally as ‘received pronunciation’ and is the kind of English spoken in the southern part of England. In this context, the word ‘received’ carries the meaning of ‘more widely accepted’. This is the kind of English that one would normally expect to hear on BBC broadcasts. However, some minor changes in the pronunciation of certain words have come about over the years.

This is what Edward Sapir, the great linguist, has to say about language as an answer to those who define language as being no more than a communication system. ‘It is best to admit that language is primarily a vocal actualization of the tendency to see realities symbolically, that it is precisely this quality which renders it a fit instrument for communication.... Language is a great force of socialization, probably the greatest that exists. By this is meant not merely the obvious fact that significant social intercourse is hardly possible without language, but that the mere fact of a common speech serves as a peculiarly potent symbol of the social solidarity of those who speak the language. The psychological significance of this goes far beyond the association of particular languages with tiolities, political entities, or smaller local groups.... The extraordiry importance of minute linguistic differences for the symbolization of psychologically real as contrasted with politically or sociologically official groups is intuitively felt by most people. “He talks like us” is equivalent to saying “He is one of us”.

‘There is another important sense in which language is a socializer beyond its literal use as a means of communication. This is in the establishment of rapport between the members of a physical group, such as a house party. It is not what is said that matters as much as that something is said. Particularly where cultural understandings of an intimate sort are somewhat lacking among the members of a physical group it is felt to be important that the lack be made good by constant supply of small talk. This caressing or reassuring quality of speech in general, even where no one has anything of moment to communicate, reminds us how much more language is than a mere technique of communication.’ Sapir winds up with a brief account of the role of language as ‘the most potent single known factor for the growth of individuality.’

There are linguists who are of the view that human language is not altogether different from animal systems of communication, but can be placed higher on a scale on which they too can be graded. But there are many other students of linguistics who find such comparisons quite meaningless for valid reasons. Without going into all of them, it might suffice to say that there is a duality in human language which is totally missing in animal systems of communication. Human language has the equivalent of both a sound system and a grammatical system. It is, thus, essentially a system of systems. But perhaps even more important is the criterion of cultural transmission (the property of being learnt by new users, instead of being transmitted genetically). It is possible for a human being to learn a new language or several more. It is impossible for an animal to acquire the sound system of another animal species. A cat can spend a whole year among lions, but it will never learn to roar like a lion even if it survives. Nor can it ever induce a lion to mew like a cat. Then there is the criterion of productivity that ebles a speaker to frame new ‘utterances’ which will be understood by other speakers of the same language without any difficulty even though they are hearing that particular utterance for the first time. Such productivity is virtually impossible in systems of animal communication. There is also the criterion of displacement that ebles human beings to produce messages that are removed in time and place of transmission from the key features of their antecedents and consequences. A human being can talk about something that happened a year ago at a place far removed from where he is located at the time of speaking. This is impossible in any system of animal communication except to a certain very limited extent in bee dancing. A bee can indicate to other bees where a new source of nectar has been found and perhaps also provide some information about the quantity and kind of nectar. All animal communication is regulated by the stimulus-response equation. Human language also ensures interchangeability in the sense that all potential transmitters of messages are also potential receivers and vice versa. This rules out traffic lights from being considered the same kind of transmitter as a human being. 

There is no system of animal communication that is as complex or sophisticated as human language. Anyone learning a new language must provide evidence of what has been learnt through language. When this happens, the language learnt is both the target subject and the means of communication about it. It is certainly possible to talk about a language learnt in another language, but the preferred mode of language learning is to talk about what is being learnt in that language rather than in any other language. It is always important to bear in mind that when we are learning a language, our principal objective is to be able to use that language rather than learning about that language. That is why translation as a means of language learning has ceased to be of much use.