The two aspects of human self-constitution through
language-individual and community (society)-derive from the
basic issue of social interrelationships. One's language is not
independent of the language of the society, despite the fact
that, in a given society, people identify themselves through
noticeable peculiarities in the way they speak, write, read, and
carry on dialogue. Elements pertaining to language are
integrated in the human's biological structure. Still, language
does not emerge, as the senses do, but is progressively
acquired. The process of language acquisition is at the same
time a process of projecting human abilities related to
language's emerging characteristics. Regardless of the level of
language acquired, language overwrites the senses. It projects
integrated human beings-a unity of nature and language-prone to
identify themselves in the culture that they continuously shape.
While nature is a relatively stable system of reference, culture
changes as humans change in the process of their various
activities. To be within a language, as all human beings are,
and in a community means to participate in processes of
individual integration and social coordination. Individual
language use and social use of language are not identical.
Individuals constitute themselves differently than communities
do. That in each community there are elements common to the
individuals constituting it only says that the sum total of
individual practical experiences of language is different from
the language characteristic of the social experience. The
difference between the language of the individual and the
language of a community is indicative of social relationships. A
more general thesis deserves to be entertained: The nature and
variety of human interactions, within and without practical
experiences of self-constitution in language, describe the
complexity of the pragmatic framework. These interactions are
part of the continuous process of identification as individuals
and groups in the course of ascertaining their identity as a
particular species.
Acknowledged forms of relationships in work, family life, magic,
ritual, myth, religion, art, science, or education are evinced
through their respective patterns. Such patterns, circumscribed
by human self-constitution in the natural and cultural context,
are significant only retroactively. They testify to the human
being's social condition and express what part of nature and
what part of culture is involved in this condition. The
primordial significance of these two phenomena lies in the
expression of practical experiences followed, not preceded, by
cognition. Active participation of individuals in practical
experiences of language acknowledges their need to identify
themselves in the patterns of interrelation mentioned. People do
not get involved with other people because either party may be
nice. Involvement is part of the continuous definition of the
individual in contexts of conflict and cooperation, of
acknowledging similarity and difference. Any dynamics, in
biology or in culture, is due to differences.
People take language for granted and never question its
conventions. As a natural, inherited (in Chomsky's view)
attribute, rather like the human senses, language is not
reinvented each time practical experiences of constitution
through language take place. Neither is its usefulness
questioned-as happens with artifacts (tools in particular)-each
time our practical experience reaches the limits of language. The
breakdown of an artifact-i.e., its inappropriateness to the task
at hand-suggests the possible experience of crafting another.
The breakdown of language points to limits in the human
experience, not in its accessories. Malfunctioning of language
points to the biological endowment and the ways this is
projected in reality through everything people do. This is not
true in respect to other, less natural, sign systems: symbols,
artificial languages, meta-languages.
What changes from one scale of humankind, i.e., from one
situation of matching needs to means for satisfying them, to
another is the coefficient of the linear equation, not the
linearity as such. A small group of people can survive by
combining hunting, fruit gathering, and farming. The effort to
satisfy a relatively bigger group increases only in proportion
to the size of the group. In the known moments when a critical
mass, or threshold, was reached (language acquisition,
agriculture, writing, industrial production, and now the
post-industrial), the expectation of higher efficiency
corresponding to each scale of human experiences triggered
changes in the pragmatic framework. The awareness of language's
failure derives from practical experiences for which new
languages become necessary.
Miscommunication is an instance of language not suitable to the
experience. Lack of communication points to limitations of the
humans involved in an activity. Miscommunication makes people
question (themselves, others) about what went wrong, why, and
what, if anything, can be done to avoid practical consequences
affecting the efficiency of their activity. Other forms of
language malfunction can affect people as individuals or as
members of a community in ways different from those peculiar to
communication. The failure of political systems, ideologies,
religion(s), markets, ethics, or family is expressed in the
breakdown of patterns of human relations. We keep alive the
language of those political systems, ideologies, religions, and
markets even after noticing their failure, not by accident or
through oversight but because all those languages are us, as we
constitute ourselves as participants in a political process,
subjects of ideological indoctrination, religious believers,
commodities in the market, family members, and ethical citizens.
The inefficiency of these experiences reflects our own
inefficiency, more difficult to overcome than poor spelling,
etymological ignorance, or phonetic deafness.