Languages are very different. So are literacies. The differences
go well beyond how words sound, how alphabets differ, how
letters are put together, or how sentences are structured in the
various languages used around the world. In some languages, fine
distinctions of color, shape, gender, numbers, and aspects of
nature are made while more general statements are difficult to
articulate. Anthropologists noted that in some of the Eskimo
languages many words could be identified for what we call (using
one word) snow and for activities involving it; in Arabic, many
names are given to camel; in Mexico, different names qualify
ceramic pottery according to function, not form: jarro for
drinking, jarra for pouring, olla for cooking beans, cazuela for
cooking stews. The Japanese and Chinese distinguish among
different kinds of rice: still in the paddy, long- grained,
shucked, kernels. George Lakoff mentions the Dyirbal language of
Australia where the category balan includes fire, dangerous
things, women, birds, and animals such as platypus, bandicoot,
and echidna.
In other languages, the effort to categorize reveals associations
surprising to individuals whose own life experiences are not
reflected in the language they observe. The questioning attitude
in the Talmud (a book of interpretations of the Hebrew Torah)
is based on 20 terms qualifying different kinds of questions.
Shuzan is calculation based on the use of the abacus. Hissan,
hiding the Japanese word hitsu that stands for the brush used
for writing, is calculation based on the use of Arabic numerals.
To be in command of a language such as Chinese (to be literate
in Chinese) is different from being literate in English, and
even more different from being literate in various tribal
languages. These examples suggest that the practical experience
through which language is constituted belongs to the broad
pragmatic context.
There is no such thing as an abstract language. Among particular
languages there are great differences in vocabulary, syntax, and
grammar, as well as in the idiosyncratic aspects implicit in
them, reflective of the experience of their constitution.
Despite such differences-some very deep-language is the common
denominator of the species Homo Sapiens, and an important
constitutive element of the dynamics of the species. We are our
language. Those who state that language follows life consider
only one side of the coin. Life is also formed in practical
experiences of language constitution. The influence goes both
ways, but human existence is in the end dependent upon the
pragmatic framework within which individuals project their own
biological structure in the practical act through which they
identify themselves
Changes in the dynamics of language can be traced in what makes
language necessary (biologically, socially, culturally), what
causes different kinds of language use, and what brought about
change. Necessity and agents of change are not the same,
although sometimes it is quite difficult to distinguish between
them. Changed working habits and new life styles are, as much as
the appropriate language characterizing them, symptomatically
connected to the pragmatic framework of our continuous
self-constitution. We still have ten fingers-a structural reality
of the human body projected into the decimal system-but the
dominant number system today is probably binary. This
observation regards the simplistic notion that words are coined
when new instances make them desirable, and disappear when no
longer required. In fact, many times words and other means of
expression constitute new instances of life or work, and thus do
not follow life, but define possible life paths.
There are several sources from which knowledge about language
constitution and its subsequent evolution can be derived:
historic evidence, anthropological research, cognitive modeling,
cultural evaluation, linguistics, and archaeology. Here is a
quote from one of the better (though not uncontroversial) books
on the subject: Language "enabled man to achieve a form of
social organization whose range and complexity was different in
kind from that of animals: whereas the social organization of
animals was mainly instinctive and genetically transmitted, that
of man was largely learned and transmitted verbally through the
cultural heritage," (cf. Jack Goody and Ian Watt, The
Consequence of Literacy). The general idea pertaining to the
social implications of language is restrictive but acceptable.
What is not at all explained here is how language comes into
existence, and why instinctive and genetically transmitted
organization (of animals) would not suffice, or even be
tantamount to the verbally transmitted organization of human
beings. As a matter of fact, language, as perceived in the text
cited and elsewhere in literature, becomes merely a storing
device, not a formative instrument, a working tool of sorts,
even a tool for making other tools and for evaluating them.
Languages have to be understood in a much broader perspective.
Like humans, languages have an evolution in time. What came
before language can be identified. What remains after a certain
language disappears (and we know of some that have disappeared)
are elements as important as the language itself for our better
understanding of what makes language necessary. The disappearance
of a language also helps us realize how the life of a language
takes place through the life of those who made it initially
possible, afterwards necessary, and finally replaced it with
means more appropriate to their practical life and to their
ever-changing condition. Research into pre-linguistic time (I
refer to anthropological, archaeological, and genetic research)
has focused on items people used in primitive forms of work. It
convincingly suggests that before a relatively stable and
repetitive structure was in place, people used sounds, gestures,
and body expressions (face, hands, legs) pretty much the way
infants do. The human lineage, in its constitutive phases, left
behind a wealth of testimony to patterns of action and, later,
to behavioral codes that result in some sense of cohesion.
Distant forebears developed patterns in obtaining food and
adapting to changes affecting the availability of food and
shelter.
Before words, tools probably embodied both potential action and
communication. Many scholars believe that tools are not possible
without, or before, words. They claim that cognitive processes
leading to the manufacture of tools, and to the tool-making
human being (Homo Faber), are based on language. In the opinion
of these scholars, tools extend the arm, and thus embody a level
of generality not accessible otherwise than through language. It
might well be that nature-based "notation" (footprints, bite
marks, and the stone chips that some researchers believe were the
actual tools) preceded language. Such notation was more in
extension of the biological reality of the human being, and
corresponded to a cognitive state, as well as to a scale of
existence, preparing for the emergence of language.
Research on emerging writing systems (the work of Scribner and
Cole, for instance, and moreover the work of Harald Haarmann,
who considers the origins of writing in the notations found at
Vinca, in the Balkans, near present-day Belgrade) has allowed us
to understand how patterns of sounds and gestures became graphic
representations; and how, once writing was established, new human
experiences, at a larger scale of work, became possible.
Finally, the lesson drawn from dying languages (Rosch's studies
of Dyirbal, reported by Lakoff) is a lesson in the foundation of
such languages and their demise. What we learn from these is
less about grammar and phonetics and more about a type of human
experience. We also acquire information regarding the supporting
biological structure of those involved in it, the role of the
scale of humankind, and how this scale changes due to a
multitude of conjectures.
The differentiation introduced above among pre-language
notations, emerging languages, emerging systems of writing, and
dying languages is simultaneously a differentiation of kinds and
types of human expression, interaction, and interpretation of
everything humans use to acknowledge their reality in the world
they live in. Drawing attention to oneself or to others does not
require language. Sounds suffice; gestures can add to the
intended signal. In every sound and in every gesture, humans
project themselves in some way. Individuality is preserved
through a sound's pitch, timbre, volume, and duration; a gesture
can be slow or rapid, timid or aggressive, or a mixture of these
characteristics. Once the same sound, or the same gesture, or the
same sequence of sounds and gestures is used to point to the
same thing, this stabilized expression becomes what can be
defined, in retrospect, as a sign.