Interest in various sign systems used by humans reaches well back
to ancient times. But it was only after renewed interest in
semiotics-the discipline dealing with signs (semeion is the
Greek word for sign)-that researchers from various other
disciplines started looking at signs and their use by humans. The
reason for this is to be found in the fast growth of expression
and communication based on means other than natural language.
Interaction between humans and increasingly complex machines also
prompted a great deal of this interest.
Language-oral and written-is probably the most complex system of
signs that researchers are aware of. Although the word language
comprises experiences in other sign systems, it is by no means
their synthesis. Before the practical experience of language,
humans constituted themselves in experiences of simpler means of
expression and communication: sounds, rhythms, gestures,
drawings, ritualized movement, and all kinds of marks. The
process can be seen as one of progressive projection of the
individual onto the environment of existence. The sign I of one's
own individuality-as distinct from other I's with whom
interaction took place through competition, cooperation, or
hostility-is most likely the first one can conjure. It must be
simultaneous with the sign of the other, since I can be defined
only in relation to something different, i.e., to the other. In
the world of the different, some entities were dangerous or
threatening, others accommodating, others cooperating. These
qualifiers could not be simply translated into identifiers. They
were actually projections of the subject as it perceived and
understood, or misunderstood, the environment.
To support my thesis about the pragmatic nature of language and
literacy, a short account of the pre-verbal stage needs to be
attempted here. Very many scholars have tried to discover the
origin of language. It is a subject as fascinating as the origins
of the universe and the origin of life itself. My interest is
rather in the area of the nature of language, the origin being
an implicit theme, and the circumstances of its origination. I
have already referred to what are loosely called tools and to
behavioral codes (sexual, or relating to shelter,
food-gathering, etc.). There is historic evidence that can be
considered for such an account, and there are quite a number of
facts related to conditions of living (changes in climate,
extinction of some animals and plants, etc.) that affect this
stage. The remaining information is comprised of inferences based
on how beings similar to what we believe human beings once were
constituted their signs as an expression of their identity.
These signs reflected the outside world, but moreover expressed
awareness of the world made possible by the human's own
biological condition.
The very first sentence of the once famous Port-Royal Grammar
unequivocally considers speaking as an explanation of our
thoughts by signs invented for this particular purpose. The same
text makes thinking independent of words or any kind of signs. I
take the position that the transition from nature to culture,
i.e., from reactions caused by natural stimuli to reflections
and awareness, is marked by both continuity and discontinuity.
The continuous aspect refers to the biological structure
projected into the universe of interactions with similar or
dissimilar entities. The discontinuity results from biological
changes in brain size, vertical posture, functions of the hands.
The pre- verbal (or pre-discursive) is immediate by its very
nature. The discursive, which makes possible the manifest
thought (one among many kinds) is mediated by the signs of
language. Closeness to the natural environment is definitive of
this stage. Although I am rather suspicious of claims made by
contemporary advocates of the psychedelic, in particular
McKenna, I can see how everything affecting the biological
potential of the being (in this case psilocybin, influencing
vision and group behavior) deserves at least consideration when
we approach the subject of language.
Signs, through which pre-verbal human beings projected their
reality in the context of their existence, expressed through
their energy and plasticity what humans were. Signs captured
what was perceived as alike in others, objects or beings, and
likeness became the shared part of signs. This was a time of
direct interaction and immediateness, a time of action and
reaction. Everything delayed or unexpected constituted the realm
of the unknown, of mystery. The scale of life was reduced. All
events were of limited steps and limited duration. Interacting
individuals constituted themselves as signs of presence, that
is, of a shared space and time. Signs could thus refer to here
and now as immediate instantiations of duration, proximity,
interval, etc., but long before the notions of space and time
were formed. Once distinctions were projected in the experience
of signs, the absent or the coming could be suggested, and the
dynamics of repetitive events could be expressed. It was only
after this self- expression took place that a representational
function became possible: a high-pitched cry not just for pain,
but also for danger that might cause pain; an arm raised not only
as an indication of firm presence, but also of requested
attention; a color applied on the skin not only as an expression
of pleasure in using a fruit or a plant, but also of
anticipated similar pleasures-an instruction to be mimetically
followed, to be imitated.
Being part of the expressed, the individuals projecting
themselves in the expression also projected a certain experience
related to the limited world they lived in. Signs standing for
associations of events (clouds with rain, noise of hooves with
animals, bubbles on a lake's surface with fish) were probably as
much representations of those sequences as an expression of
constituted experience shared with others living in the same
environment. Sharing experience beyond the here and now, in other
words, transition from direct and unreflected to indirect and
reflected interaction, is the next cognitive step. It took place
once shared signs were associated with shared common experiences
and with rules of generating new signs that could report on new,
similar, or dissimilar experiences. Each sign is a biological
witness to the process in which it was constituted and of the
scale of the experience. A whisper addresses one other person,
maybe two, very close to each other. A shout corresponds to a
different scale. Accordingly, each sign is its shorthand history
and a bridge from the natural to the cultural.
Sequences, such as successions of sounds or verbal utterances, or
configurations of signs, such as drawings, testify to a higher
cognitive level. Relations between sequences or configurations
of signs and the practical experience in which they are
constituted are less intuitive. To derive from the understanding
of such sign relations some practical rules of significance to
those sharing a sign system was an experience in human
interaction. Later in time, the immediate experiential component
is present only indirectly in language. The constitution of the
language is the result of the change of focus from signs to
relations among them. Grammar, in its most primitive condition,
was not about how signs are put together (syntax), nor of how
signs represent something (semantics), but of the circumstances
determining new signs to be constituted in a manner preserving
their experiential quality-the pragmatics.
Consequently, language was constituted as an intermediary between
stabilized experience (repetitive patterns of work and
interaction) and future (patterns broken). Signs still preserved
the concreteness of the event that triggered their constitution.
In the use of language, the human being abandoned a great deal
of individual projection. Language's degree of generality became
far higher than that of its components (signs themselves), or of
any other signs. But even at the level of language, the
characteristic function of this sign system was the constitution
of practical experiences, not the representation of means for
sharing categories of experiences. In each sign, and more so in
each language, the biological and the artificial collide. When
the biological element dominates, sign experiences take place as
reactions. When the cultural dominates, the sign or language
experience becomes an interpretation, i.e., a continuation of
the semiotic experience. Interpretation of any kind corresponds
to the never-ending differentiation from the biological and is
representative of the constitution of culture. Under the name
culture as used above, we understand human nature and its
objectification in products, organizations, ideas, attitudes,
values, artifacts.
The practical experience of sign constitution-from the use of
branches, rocks, and fur to the most primitive etchings (on
stone, bone, and wood), from the use of sounds and gestures to
articulated language-contributed to successive changes in
ongoing activity (hunting, seeking shelter, collaborative
efforts), as well as to changes in humans themselves. In the
universe of rich detail in which humans affirmed their identity
through fighting for resources and creatively finding
alternatives, information did not change, but the awareness of
the practical implications of details increased. Each
observation made in the appropriation of knowledge through its
use in work triggered possible patterns of interaction.
Once signs were constituted, sharing in the experience became
possible. Genetic transmission of information was relatively
slow. It dominated the initial phases during which the species
introduced its own patterns within the patterns of the natural
environment. Semiotic transmission of information, in particular
through language, is much faster than genetic inheritance but
cannot replace it. Human life is attested at roughly 2.5 million
years ago, incipient language use roughly 200,000 years ago.
Agriculture as a patterned experience emerged no more than 19,000
years ago, and writing less than 5,000 years ago (although some
researchers estimate 10,000 years). The shorter and shorter
cycles characteristic of self-constitution correspond to the
involvement of means other than genetic in the process of change.
What today we call mental skills are the result of a rather
compressed process. Compare the time it took until motor skills
involved in hunting, gathering, and foraging were perfected to
the extent they were before they started to degenerate,
relatively speaking, as we notice in our days.