Traditionally, language functions either are associated with the
workings of the brain or defined in the realm of human
interaction. In the first case, comprehension, speech
production, the ability to read, spell, write, and similar are
investigated. Through non-invasive methods, neuropsychologists
attempt to establish how memory and language functions relate to
the brain. In the second case, the focus is on social and
communicative functions, with an increasing interest in
underlying aspects (often computationally modeled). My approach
is different in that it bases language functions in the
practical experience, i.e., pragmatics, of the species. Language
functions are, in the final analysis, sign processes.
Preceding language, signs functioned based on their ontogenetic
condition. As marks left behind-footprints, blood from an open
wound, teethmarks-signs facilitated associations only to the
extent that individuals directly experienced their coming into
being. Cognitive awareness of such marks led to associations of
patterns, such as action and reaction, cause and effect. Biting
that leaves behind teethmarks is an example. Pointers to
objects-broken branches along a path, obsidian flakes where
stones had been processed, ashes where a fire had burned-and,
even more so, symptoms-strength or weakness-are less immediate,
but still free of intentionality. Imitation brought the
unintentional phase of sign experience to an end. In imitative
signs, which are supposed to resemble whatever they stand for,
the mark is not left, but produced with the express desire to
share.
The function best describing signs that are marks of the
originator is expression. Communication is the function of
bringing individuals together through shared experiences.
Signification corresponds to an experience that has signs as its
object and relies on the symbolic level. It is the function of
endowing signs with the memory of their constitution in
practical experiences. Signification expresses the
self-reflective dimension of signs. Expression and
communication, moreover signification, vary dramatically from
one pragmatic framework to another.
Expressions, as simili of individual characteristics and personal
experience, can be seen as translations of these characteristics
and of the experience through which they come into being. A very
large footprint is a mark associated with a large foot, human or
animal. It is important insofar as it defines, within a limited
scale of experience, a possible outcome essential to the
survival of those involved. Expressions in speech are marked by
co-presence. The functioning of language within orality rested
upon a shared experience of time and space, expressed through
here and now. In writing, expression hides itself in the
physical characteristics of the skill. This is how we come, for
example, to graphology-an exercise in associating patterns of the
marks somebody wrote on paper to psychological characteristics.
Literacy is not concerned with this kind of expression, although
literacy is conducive to it and eventually serves as a medium
for graphology. Rather, literacy stipulates norms and
expectations of correct writing. People adopting them know well
that within the pragmatics based on literacy, the efficiency of
practical experiences of self-constitution is enhanced by uniform
performance. As we search in our days for the fingerprints of
terrorists, we experience the function of expression in almost
the reverse of previous pragmatic contexts. Their
marks-identifiers of parts used to trigger explosions, or of
manufacturers of explosives-are accidental. Terrorists would
prefer to leave none.
The analysis can be repeated for communication and
signification. What they have in common is the progressive
scale: expression for kin, expression for larger groups,
collective expression, forceful expression as the scale of
activity increases and individuals are gradually being negated
in their characteristics. Communication makes the process even
more evident. To bring together members of a family is different
from achieving the togetherness of a tribe, community, city,
province, nation, continent, or globe. But as available
resources do not necessarily keep up with increased
populations, and even less with the growth in need and
expectations, it is critical to integrate cognitive resources in
experiences of self-constitution. Communication, as a function
performed through sign systems, reached through the means of
literacy higher levels than during any previous pragmatic phase.
Another increase in scale will bring even higher expectations of
efficiency and, implicitly, the need for means to meet such
expectations. Only as practical experiences become more complex
and integrate additional cognitive resources do changes-such as
from pre-verbal to verbal sign systems, from orality to writing,
and from writing to literacy, or from literacy to post-
literacy-take place. In other words, once the functioning of
language no longer adequately supports human pragmatics in terms
of achieving the efficiency that corresponds to the actual scale
of that pragmatics, new forms of expression, communication, and
signification become necessary.
These remarks concern our subject, i.e., the transitional nature
of any sign system, and in particular that of orality or that of
literacy, in two ways: 1.
They make us aware of fundamental functions (expression,
communication, signification) and their dependence on pragmatic
contexts. 2.
They point to conditions under which new means and methods
pertinent to effective functioning complement or override those
of transcended pragmatic contexts.
As we have seen, prior to language experiences, people
constituted their identity in a phase of circular and
self-referential reflection. This was followed by a pragmatics
leading to sequential, linear practice of language and language
notation. With writing, and especially with literacy,
sequentiality, linearity, hierarchy, and centralism became
characteristics of the entire practical experience. Writing was
stamped by these characteristics at its inception, as were other
practical activities. With its unfolding in literacy, it
actively shaped further practical experiences. The potential of
experiences sharing in these characteristics was reached in
productive activities, in social life, in politics, in the arts,
in commerce, in education and in leisure.
The advent of higher-level languages and of means for
visualization, expanding into animation, modeling, and
simulation in our day, entails new changes. Their meaning,
however, will forever escape us if we are not prepared to see
what makes them necessary. Ultimately, this means to return to
human beings and their dynamic unfolding within a broader
genetic script. To make sense of any explanatory models
advanced, here or elsewhere, we need to understand the relation
between cultural structure-in which sign systems, literacy, and
post-literate means are identified-and social structure, which
comprises the interaction of the individuals constituting
society. The premise of this enterprise is as follows: Since not
even the originators of the behaviorist model believed that we
are the source of our behavior (Skinner went on record with this
in an interview shortly before his death), we can look at the
individuals constituting a human community as the locus of human
interactions. Language is only one agent of integration among
many. The shift from the natural to the cultural-with its
climax in literacy-was actually from immediacy, circularity,
discreteness, and the physical realm to indirectness,
sequentiality, linearity, and metaphysics. What we experience in
our time is a change of course, to the civilization of
illiteracy, characterized by msny mediating layers,
configuration, non-linearity, distribution of tasks, and
meta-language. In the process, the functioning of language is as
much subject to change as the human beings constituted in
succeeding practical experiences of a fundamentally new nature.