LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION[1]
[Footnote 1: Much of the technical material for this chapter is
drawn from Leonard Bloomfield's _The Study of Language_, and
W. D. Whitney's _The Life and Growth of Language_.]
It was earlier pointed out that human beings alone possess
language. They alone can make written symbols and heard
sounds stand for other things, for objects, actions, qualities,
and ideas. In this chapter the consideration of language may
best be approached from the spoken tongue, under the influence
of which, except in the simplest type of pictorial writing,
the written form develops.[2]
[Footnote 2: Bloomfield: _loc. cit._, pp. 7-8.]
From the point of view of the student of behavior, language,
spoken language especially, is a habit, acquired like walking
or swimming. It is made possible primarily by the fact that
human beings possess a variety and flexibility of vocal reflexes
possessed by no other animal. All the higher animals have a
number of vocal reflexes, which are called out primarily in the
expression of emotion or desire. Cries of pain, hunger, rage,
sex desire or desire for companionship, are common to a great
number of the animal species. But these cries and vocal
utterances are limited, and comparatively unmodifiable.
They are moreover expressed, so far as experimental observation
can reveal, with no consciousness of the specific significance
of particular sounds and are used as the involuntary
expression of emotion rather than as a specific means of
communication.
... The primates have a much larger number of such vocal instincts
than the other mammals, and a much larger number of stimuli
can call them out, _e.g._, injury to bodily tissue calls out one group;
hunger calls out a certain group; sex stimuli (mate, etc.) another;
and similarly cold, swiftly moving objects, tones, strange animals
call out others. When attachments are formed between the female
and her offspring another large group is called into action. There is
no evidence to show in the case of mammals that these vocal instincts
are modified by the sounds of other animals.... These throat habits
may be cultivated to such an extent in birds that we may get an
approximation, more or less complete, to a few such habits possessed
by the human being. Such throat habits, however, are not language
habits.[1]
[Footnote 1: Watson: _Behavior_, p. 323.]
In human beings language, it is clear, may attain extraordinary
refinement and complexity, and may convey extremely
fine shades and subtleties of emotion or idea. This
results from the fact that man is born with a vocal
apparatus far superior in development to that of any of the
animals.
It is pretty clear that the mutant man, when thrown off from the
primate stock, sprang forth with a vocal apparatus different from
that of the parent stock, and possessing abundant richness in reflexes,
even far surpassing that found in the bird. It is interesting to
observe, too, in this connection, that within the narrow space occupied
by the vocal apparatus we have a system of muscular mechanisms
which has within it, looking at it now as a whole, the same possibilities
of habit formation that we find in the remaining portion of bodily
musculature.... It is probable that in a few years we shall undertake
the study of such habits from exactly the same standpoint that
we now employ in studies upon the acquisition of skill in the human
being.[2]
[Footnote 2: _Ibid._, pp. 323-24.]
The human baby starts its expressive habits by emitting
with wide-open mouth an undifferentiated shriek of pain. A
little later it yells in the same way at any kind of discomfort.
It begins before the end of the first year to croon when it is
contented. As it grows older it begins to make different
sounds when it experiences different emotions. And with
remarkable rapidity its repertoire of articulatory movements
has greatly increased.
Speech that begins in the child as a mere vague vocal
expression of emotion soon begins to exhibit a marked element
of mimicry. The child begins to associate the words uttered
by his nurse or parents with the specific objects they point to.
He comes to connect "milk," "sleep," "mother" with the
experiences to which they correspond. The child thus learns
to react to certain sounds as significant of certain experiences.
Unlike Adam, he does not have to give names to animals, or
for that matter to anything else on earth. They all have
specific names in the particular language in which he happens
to be brought up. In the case of other habits, largely through
trial and error, he learns to associate given sounds expressed
by other people about him with given experiences, pleasant
or unpleasant. He learns further to imitate, so far as possible,
these sounds, as a means of more precisely communicating
his wants or securing their fulfillment.
In this connection students of language frequently have
raised the question of how man first came to associate a given
sound-sequence with a given experience. Like fire, language
was once conceived to be a divine gift. Another theory
postulated a genius who took it into his head to give the
things of earth their present inevitable names. One other
theory equally dubious held that language started in onomatopoetic
expressions like "Bow-wow," for dog. Still another
hypothesis once highly credited held that the sounds first
uttered were the immediate and appropriate expressions
called out by particular types of emotional experience. The
validity of the last two theories has been rendered particularly
dubious. The very instances of imitative words cited,
words like "cuckoo," "crash," "flash," were, in their original
forms, quite other than they are now. And that words are
not immediately apposite expressions of the emotions which
they represent, has been generally recognized. In gesture
language, the gesture has to remain fairly imitative or
expressive to be intelligible. But an examination of half a dozen
casual words in contemporary languages shows how arbitrary
are the signs used, and how little appositeness or relevance
they bear in their sound to the sense which they represent.
The detailed study of the perfectly regular changes that so
largely characterize the evolution of language, have revealed
the inadequacy of any of these views. There seems to be, in
fact, no explanation of the origin of the language any more
than there is of the origin of life. All that linguistic science
can do is to reveal the history of language. And in this
history, human language stands revealed as a highly refined
development of the crude and undifferentiated expressions
which, under emotional stress, are uttered by all the animals.
LANGUAGE AS A SOCIAL HABIT. Language, as has repeatedly
been pointed out, is essentially social in character. It is, in
the first place, primarily an instrument of communication
between individuals, and is cultivated as such. In human
speech, interjections like "Oh!" or "Ah!" are still involuntary
escapes of emotion, but language develops as a vehicle of
communication to others rather than as a mere emotional outlet
for the individual. Even if it were possible for the mythical
man brought up in solitude on a desert island to have a
language, it is questionable whether he would use it. Since
language is a way of making our wants, desires, information
known to others, it is stimulated by the presence of and
contact with others. Excess vitality may go into shouting or
song,[1] but language as an instrument of specific utterance
comes to have a more definite use and provocation. Man,
as already pointed out, is a highly gregarious animal, and
language is his incomparable instrument for sharing his emotions
and ideas and experience with others. The whole process
of education, of the transmission of culture from the
mature to the younger members of a society, is made possible
through this instrument, whereby achievements and traditions
are preserved and transmitted in precise and public
terms.
[Footnote 1: Human song is by some linguistic experts, including
Bloomfield, held to have originated in the chant of rhythmic
labor, as in rowing or threshing.]
Secondly, language is social in that, for the individual at
least, it is socially acquired. The child first imitates sounds
without any consciousness of their meaning, just as he imitates
other actions in sheer "physiological sympathy." But
he learns soon, by watching the actions of other people, that
given sounds are always performed when these others do given
actions. He learns that some sounds are portents of anger
and punishment; still others of satisfaction and pleasure. He
learns soon to specify his utterances, to use sounds as specific
stimuli, to attain through other people specific satisfactions.
The child is born with a flexible set of reflexes. In which way
they shall be developed depends entirely on the accident of the
child's environment. Whether he shall call it "bread" or
"pain" or "brod," depends on the particular social environment
in which he from the first hears that particular item of
experience referred to. A child of American missionaries in
Turkey picks up the language of that country as well as that
of his own. An English child brought up under a French
nurse may learn with perfect ease the foreign tongue, and to
the exclusion of that of his native country. Indeed, so completely
subject is one in this regard to one's early environment,
that it is not only difficult in later life to acquire a new
pronunciation, but one finds it impossible to breathe freely,
as it were, in the whole psychological atmosphere of a foreign
language. Its grammatical categories, its spelling, its logic
seem hopelessly irrational. It was perfectly natural of the
Englishman in the story, when he was told that the French
called it "pain," to insist, "Well, it's bread, anyhow." Many
a reader of a foreign language which has become habitual can
still not refrain from translating, as he reads, what seem to
him irrational idioms into the familiar, facile, and sensible
modes of his native tongue.
LANGUAGE AND MENTAL LIFE. The connection of language
with thought has repeatedly been noted. It has even been
questioned whether thought in any effective sense is possible
without words. In general it may be said that thinking demands
clean-cut and definite symbols to work with, and that
language offers these in incomparable form. A word enables
one to isolate in thought the dominant elements of an experience
and prevents them from "slipping through one's fingers."
The importance of having words by which concepts may be
distinguished and isolated from one another will become
clearer by a brief reminder of the nature of reflection. Thinking
is in large part (as will be discussed in detail in chapter
XIII) concerned with the breaking-up of an experience into
its significant elements. But experience begins with objects,
and so far as perceptual experience is concerned, ends there.
We perceive objects, not qualities, actions, or ideas apart from
objects. And the elements into which thinking analyzes an
experience are never present, save in connection with, as
parts of, a sensibly perceived object. Thus we never perceive
whiteness save in white objects; warmth save in warm objects;
red save in red objects. We never, for that matter,
perceive so abstract a thing as an "object." We experience
red houses or red flags; white flowers, white shoes, white
paper; warm stoves, warm soup, and warm plates. Even
houses and stoves and shoes are, in a sense, abstractions. No
two of these are ever alike. But it is of the highest importance
for us to have some means of identifying and preserving
in memory the significant resemblances between our experiences.
Else we should be, as it were, utterly astounded every
time we saw a chair or a table or a fork. Though they may,
in each case in which we experience them, differ in detail,
chairs, tables, forks have certain common features which we
can "abstract" from the gross total experience, and by a
word or "term," define, record, communicate, and recall. The
advantage of a precise technical vocabulary over a loose
"popular" one is that we can by means of the former more
accurately single out the specific and important elements of
an experience and distinguish them from one another. The
common nouns, or "general names" in a language indicate
to what extent and in what manner that language, through
some or other of its users, classifies its experiences. Highly
developed languages make it possible to classify similarities
not easily detected in crude experience. They make it
possible to identify other things than merely directly sensed
objects.
In primitive languages experience is described and classified
only in so far as it is perceptual. In other words, primitive
languages have names for objects only, not for ideas, qualities,
or relations. Thus it is impossible in some Indian languages
to express the concept of a "brother" by the same word, unless
the "brother" is in every case in the same identical
circumstances. One cannot use the same word for "man" in
different relations: "man-eating," "man-sleeping,"
"man-standing-here," and "man-running-there" would all be separate
compound words. Among the Fuegians there is one
word which means "to look at one another, hoping that each
will offer to do something which both parties desire but are
unwilling to do."[1] Marett writes in this connection:
[Footnote 1: Marett: _Anthropology_, p. 140.]
Take the inhabitants of that cheerless spot, Tierra del Fuego,
whose culture is as rude as that of any people on earth. A scholar
who tried to put together a dictionary of their language found that
he had got to reckon with more than thirty thousand words, even
after suppressing a large number of forms of lesser importance. And
no wonder that the tally mounted up. For the Fuegians had more
than twenty words, some containing four syllables, to express what
for us would be either "he" or "she"; then they had two names for
the sun, two for the moon, and two more for the full moon, each of
the last named containing four syllables and having no elements in
common.[2]
[Footnote 2: _Ibid._, pp. 138-39.]
It is easy to see how very little refinement or abstraction
from experience could be made with such a cumbersome and
inflexible vocabulary. The thirty thousand word vocabulary
expressed a poverty of linguistic technique rather than a richness
of ideas.
At the other extreme stands a language like English, which
is, to an extraordinary degree, an "analytic" language. It has
comparatively no inflections. This means that words can be
used and moved about freely in different situations and relations.
Thus the dominant elements of an experience can be
freely isolated. A noun standing for a certain object or relation
is not chained to a particular set of accompanying circumstances.
"Man" stands as a definite concept, whether it be
used with reference to an ancient Greek, a wounded man, a
brave, a wretched, a competent, or a tall man. We can give
the accompanying circumstances by additional adjectives,
which are again freely movable verbally and intellectually.
Thus we can speak of a brave child and a tall tower as well as
a brave man and a tall man. In Marett's words:
The evolution of language then, on this view, may be regarded as a
movement away from the holophrastic [compound] in the direction
of the analytic. When every piece in your playbox of verbal bricks
can be dealt with separately, because it is not joined on in all sorts of
ways to the other pieces, then only can you compose new constructions
to your liking. Order and emphasis, as is shown by English,
and still more conspicuously by Chinese, suffice for sentence-building.
Ideally, words should be individual and atomic. Every modification
they suffer by internal change of sound, or by having prefixes
or suffixes tacked on to them, involves a curtailment of their
free use and a sacrifice of distinctness. It is quite easy, of course,
to think confusedly, even whilst employing the clearest type of
language.... On the other hand, it is not feasible to attain a high
degree of clear thinking, when the only method of speech available
is one that tends toward wordlessness--that is to say, one that is
relatively deficient in verbal forms that preserve their identity in all
contexts.[1]
[Footnote 1: Marett: _loc. cit._, pp. 141-42.]
Languages differ not only in being more or less analytic,
but in their general modes of classification. That is, not only
do they have more or less adequate vocabularies, but in their
syntax, their sentence structure, their word forms, they variously
organize experience. It is important to note that in
these divergent classifications no one of them is more final
than another. We are tempted, despite this fact, to think
that the grammar, spelling, and phonetics of our own language
constitute the last word in the rational conveyance of thought.
THE INSTABILITY OF LANGUAGE. Language being a social habit,
it is to be expected that it should not stay fixed and changeless.
The simpler physiological actions are not performed in
the same way by any two individuals, and no social practice
is ever performed in the same way by two members of a group,
or by two different generations. In this connection writes
Professor Bloomfield:
The speech of former times, wherever history has given us records
of it, differs from that of the present. When we read Shakspere,
for example, we are disturbed by subtle deviations from our own
habits in the use of words and in construction; if our actors
pronounced their lines as Shakspere and his contemporaries did we
should say that they had an Irish or German brogue. Chaucer we
cannot read without some grammatical explanation or a glossary;
correctly pronounced his language would sound to us more like Low
German than like our English. If we go back only about forty
generations from our time to that of Alfred the Great, we come to
English as strange to us as modern German, and quite unintelligible,
unless we study carefully both grammar and lexicon.[1]
[Footnote 1: Bloomfield: _loc. cit._, p. 195.]
There are, in general, three kinds of changes that take place
in a language. "Phonetic" changes, that is, changes in the
articulation of words, regardless of the meaning they bear.
This is illustrated simply by the word "name" which, in the
eighteenth century was pronounced ne'm. " Analogic"
changes, that is, changes in the articulation of words under
the influence of words somewhat similar in meaning. The
word "flash," for example, became what it is because of the
sound of words associated in meaning, "crash," "dash,"
"smash." The third process of change in language alters
not only the articulate forms of words, not only their sound,
but their sense. All these changes, as will be presently pointed
out, can easily be explained by the laws of habit early discussed
in this book, these laws being applicable to the habit of
language as well as to any other.
In the case of phonetic change, it is only to be expected that
the sounds of a language will not remain eternally changeless.
A language is spoken by a large number of individuals, no
two of whom are gifted with precisely the same vocal apparatus.
In consequence no two of them will utter words in
precisely the same way. Before writing and printing were
general, these slight variations in articulation were bound to
have an effect on the language. People more or less unconsciously
imitate the sounds they hear, especially if they are
not checked up by the written forms of words. Even to-day
changes are going on, and writing is at best a poor representation
of phonetics. The Georgian, the Londoner, the Welshman
and the Middle Westerner can understand the same
printed language, precisely because it does not at all represent
their peculiarities of dialect. Variant sounds uttered by one
individual may be caught up in the language, especially if the
variant articulation is simpler or shorter. Thus the shortening
of a word from several syllables to one, though it starts
accidentally, is easily made habitual among a large number
of speakers because it does facilitate speech. In the classic
example, pre-English, "habeda" and "habedun" became in
Old English, "hæfde" and" hæfdon," and are in present English
(I, we) "had."[1] In the same way variations that reduce
the unstressed syllables of a word readily insinuate themselves
into the articulatory habits of a people. In the production
of stressed syllables, the vocal chords are under high tension
and the breath is shut in. It is easier, consequently, to produce
the unstressed syllables "with shortened, weakened
articulations... lessening as much as possible all interference
with the breath stream."[2] Thus "contemporaneous prohibition"
becomes "kntempe'rejnjes prhe'bifn." Sound
changes thus take place, in general, as lessenings of the
labor of articulation, by means of adaptation to prevailing rest
positions of the vocal organs. They take place further in
more or less accidental adaptations to the particular speech
habits of a people. That is, those sounds become discarded
that do not fit in with the general articulatory tendencies of
a language. Of this the weakening of unstressed syllables in
English and palatalization in Slavic are examples.[1*]
[Footnote 1: Bloomfield: _loc. cit._, p. 211.]
[Footnote 2: _Ibid._, p. 212.]
[Footnote 1*: _Ibid._, p. 218.]
These changes of sound in language so far discussed are
made independently of the meaning of words. Other changes
in articulation occur, as already noted, by analogy of sound or
meaning. That is, words that have associated meanings
come to be similarly articulated. This is simply illustrated in
the case of the child who thinks it perfectly natural to assimilate
by analogy "came" to "come." Thus the young child
will frequently say, until he is corrected, he "comed," he
"bringed," he "fighted." In communities where printing
and writing and reading are scarce, such assimilation by
analogy has an important effect in modifying the forms of
words.
CHANGES IN MEANING. The changes in language most important
for the student of human behavior are changes in
meaning. Language, it must again be stressed, is an instrument
for the communication of ideas. The manner in which
the store of meanings in a language becomes increased and
modified (the etymology of a language) is, in a sense, the
history of the mental progress of the people which use it. For
changes in meaning are primarily brought about when the
words in a language do not suffice for the larger and larger
store of experiences which individuals within the group desire
to communicate to one another. The meanings of old words
are stretched, as it were, to cover new experiences; old words
are transferred bodily to new experiences; they are slightly
modified in form to apply to new experiences analogous to the
old; new words are formed after analogy with ones already
in use.
A simple illustration of the application of a word already
current to a wider situation is the application of the word
"head" as a purely objective name, to a new experience,
which has certain analogies with the old; as when we speak
of a "head" of cabbage, the" head" of an army, the "head"
of the class, or the "headmaster." In many such cases the
transferred meaning persists alongside of the old. Thus the
word "capital" used as the name for the chief city in a
country, persists alongside of its use in "capital" punishment,
"capital" story, etc. But sometimes the transferred
meaning of the word becomes dominant and exclusive. Thus
"disease" (dis-ease) once meant discomfort of any kind.
Now it means specifically some physical ailment. The older
use has been completely discarded. To "spill" once meant,
in the most general sense, to destroy. Now all the other uses,
save that of pouring out, have lapsed. "Meat" which once
meant any kind of nourishment has now come to refer almost
exclusively (we still make exceptions as in the case of sweetmeat)
to edible flesh. Whenever the special or novel application
of the word becomes dominant, then we say the meaning
of the word has changed.
Mental progress is largely dependent on the transfer of
words to newer and larger spheres of experience, the modification
of old words or the formation of new ones to express the
increasing complexity of relations men discover to exist
between things. In the instances already cited some of the
transferred words lost their more general meaning and became
specialized, as in the case of "meat," "spill," etc. Other
words, like "head," though they may keep their specific objective
meaning, may come to be used in a generalized intellectual
sense. One of the chief ways by which a language remains
adequate to the demands of increasing knowledge and experience
of the group is through the transfer of words having
originally a purely objective sense to emotional and
intellectual situations. These words, like "bitter," "sour,"
"sharp," referring originally only to immediate physical
experiences, to objects perceived through the senses, come to
have intellectual and emotional significance, as when we speak
of a "sour" face, a "bitter" disappointment, a "sharp"
struggle. Most of our words that now have abstract emotional
or intellectual connotations were once words referring
exclusively to purely sensible (sense perceptual) experiences.
"Anxiety" once meant literally a "narrow place," just as
when we speak of some one having "a close shave." To
"refute" once meant literally "to knock out" an argument.
To "understand" meant "to stand in the midst of." To
"confer" meant "to bring together." Sensation words
themselves were once still more concrete in their meaning.
"Violet" and "orange" are obviously taken as color names from
the specific objects to which they still refer. Language has
well been described as "a book of faded metaphors." The
history of language has been to a large extent the assimilation
and habitual mechanical use of words that were, when first
used, strikingly figurative.
The novel use of a word that is now a quite regular part
of the language may in many cases first be ascribed to a
distinguished writer. Shakespeare is full of expressions which
have since, and because of his use of them, become literally
household words. Many words that have now a general
application arose out of a peculiar local situation, myth, or
name. "Boycott" which has become a reasonably intelligible
and universal word, only less than fifty years ago referred
particularly and exclusively to Boycott, a certain unpopular
Irish landowner who was subjected to the kind of discrimination
for which the word has come to stand. "Burke"
used as a verb has its origin in the name of a notorious Edinburgh
murderer. Characters in fiction or drama, history or legend
come to be standard words. Everyone knows what we mean when we
speak of a Quixotic action, a Don Juan,
a Galahad, a Chesterfield. To tantalize arises from the
mythical perpetual frustration of Tantalus in the Greek
story. Expressions that had a special meaning in the
works of a philosopher or littérateur come to be generally
used, as "Platonic love."[1] Again words that arise as mere
popular witticisms or vulgarisms may be brought into the
language as permanent acquisitions. "Mob," now a quite
legitimate word, was originally a shortening of _mobile vulgum_,
and was, only a hundred years ago, suspect in polite discourse.
[Footnote 1: Though this is very loosely and inaccurately used.]
Outside the deliberate invention by scientists of terms for
the new relations they have discovered, more or less spontaneous
variation in the use of words and their unconscious
assimilation by large numbers with whose other language
habits they chance to fit, is the chief source of language
growth. One might almost say words are wrenched from
their original local setting, and given such a generalized
application that they are made available for an infinite complexity
of scientific and philosophical thought.
UNIFORMITIES IN LANGUAGE. Thus far we have discussed
changes in language from the psychological viewpoint, that is,
we have considered the human tendencies and habits which
bring about changes in the articulation and meaning, in the
sound and the sense, of words. It is evident from these
considerations that there can be no absolute uniformity in
spoken languages, not even in the languages of two persons
thrown much together. Within a country where the same
language is ostensibly spoken, there are nevertheless
differences in the language as spoken by different social strata, by
different localities. There are infinite subtle variations
between the articulation and the word uses of different
individuals. There are languages within languages, the dialects of
localities, the jargon of professional and trade groups, the
special pronunciations and special and overlapping vocabularies
of different social classes.
But while there are these many causes, both of individual
difference and of differing social environments, why languages
do not remain uniform, there are similar causes making for a
certain degree of uniformity within a language. There is one
very good reason why, to a certain extent, languages do attain
uniformity; they are socially acquired. The individual learns
to speak a language from those about him, and individuals
brought up within the same group will consequently learn to
speak, within limits, the same tongue; they will learn to
articulate through imitation, and, while no individual ever
precisely duplicates the sounds of others, he duplicates them
as far as possible. He learns, moreover, as has already been
pointed out, to attach given meanings to given words, not for
any reason of their peculiar appositeness or individual caprice,
but because he learns that others about him habitually attach
certain meanings to certain sounds. And since one is stimulated
to expression primarily by the desire and necessity of
communication of ideas a premium is put upon uniformity.
It is of no use to use a language if it conceals one's thoughts.
In consequence, within a group individual variations, unless
for reasons already discussed they happen to lend themselves
to ready assimilation by the group, will be mere slips of the
tongue. They will be discarded and forgotten, or, if the individual
cannot rid himself of them, will like stammering or stuttering or
lisping be set down as imperfections and social
handicaps. The uniformity of language within groups whose
individual members have much communication with each
other is thus to a certain extent guaranteed. A man who is
utterly individualistic in his language might just as well have
no language at all, unless for the satisfaction of expressing to
himself his own emotions.[1] Language is learned from the
group among whom one moves, and those sounds and senses
of words are, on the whole, retained, which are intelligible to
the group. Those sounds and meanings will best be understood
which are already in use. No better illustration could
be found of how custom and social groups preserve and enforce
standards of individual action.
[Footnote 1: There have been a few poets, like Emily Dickinson,
or mystics like Blake, some of whose work exhibits almost complete
unintelligibility to most readers, though doubtless it had a very
specific meaning and vividness to the writers concerned.]
The obverse of the fact that intercommunication promotes
uniformity in language is that lack of communication brings
about language differentiation. The less the intercommunication
between groups, the more will the languages of the
groups differ, however uniform they may be within the groups
themselves. The most important factor in differentiation of
language is local differentiation. In some European countries
every village speaks its own dialect. In passing from one
village to another the dialects may be mutually intelligible,
but by the time one has passed from the first village in the
chain to the last, one may find that the dialect of the first
and last are utterly unintelligible to each other. A real break
in language, as opposed to dialect variations, occurs where
there is a considerable barrier between groups, such as a
mountain range, a river, a tribal or political boundary. The
more impenetrable the barriers between two groups the more
will the languages differ, and the less mutually intelligible will
they be.
Looking back over the history of language the student of
linguistics infers that those languages which bear striking or
significant similarities are related. Thus Spanish, Italian,
French, Portuguese, and Roumanian are traceable directly
back to the Latin. This does not mean that all over the areas
occupied by the speakers of these languages Latin was originally
spoken. But the Romans in their conquests, both military
and cultural, were able to make their own language
predominant. The variations which make French and Roumanian,
say, mutually unintelligible, are due to the fact that
Latin was for the natives in these conquered territories
assimilated to their own languages. So that, in the familiar
example, the Latin "homo" becomes "uomo" in Italian,
"homme" in French, "hombre" in Spanish, and "om" in
Roumanian. Similarly related but mutually unintelligible
languages among the American Indians have been traced to
three great source-languages.
The history of European languages offers an interesting
example of differentiation. English and German, for example,
are both traceable back to West-Germanic; from that
in turn to a hypothecated primitive West-Germanic. All
the European languages are traceable back to a hypothecated
Primitive Indo-European.[1] The theory held by most
students of this subject is that the groups possessing this
single uniform language spread over a wider and wider area,
gradually became separated from each other by geographical
barriers and tribal affiliations, and gradually (and on the
part of individual speakers unconsciously) modified their
speech so that slight differences accumulated, and resulted
finally in widely different and mutually unintelligible
languages.
[Footnote 1: By the word "primitive" the linguistic experts
mean a language the existence of which is inferred from common
features of several related languages, of which written records
are current, but of which no actual records exist. Thus, if
there were no written records of Latin the approximate
reconstruction of it by linguists would be called "Primitive
Romance."]
The process of differentiation in the languages of different
groups is very marked. We find, for example, in the early
history of Greece and Rome, a number of widely different
dialects. There seems every evidence that these were derived
from some more primitive tongue. We find, likewise, on the
American continent, several hundred different languages,
which--to the untrained observer--bear not the slightest
resemblance to each other. This welter and confusion can
also be traced back to a few primitive and uniform languages.
Thus the history of civilization reveals this striking
differentiation in the language of different groups, a
counter-tendency making for a wider uniformity of particular
languages. One "favored dialect" becomes standard, predominant
and exclusive. Thus out of all the French dialects, the
one that survives is the speech of Paris; Castilian becomes
standard Spanish, and in ancient Greece the language of
Athens supersedes all the other dialects. The reasons for the
survival of one out of a great welter of dialects may be various.
Not infrequently the language of a conquering people has, in
more or less pure form, succeeded the language of the conquered.
This was the case in the history of the Romance
languages, which owe their present forms to the spread of
Roman arms and culture. There was, as is well known, a
similar development in the case of the English language. The
Norman Conquest introduced, under the auspices of a socially
superior and victorious group, a language culturally superior
to the Anglo-Saxon. The latter was, of course, not entirely
replaced, but profoundly modified, especially in the enrichment
and enlargement of its vocabulary. One has but to
note such words as "place," "choir," "beef," etc., which
came entirely to replace in the language the indigenous Anglo-Saxon
names for those objects.
Colonization and commercial expansion may bring about
the replacement of the native language of special localities by
the language of the colonizers, at least in hybrid form. The
spread of English through Australia, and through the larger
part of North America, the spread of Spanish through South
America, in each instance practically replacing the native
tongues, are cases in point.[1]
[Footnote 1: Dialects and jargons are often the result of the
partial assimilation by the speakers of one language of another
language to which they are exposed. French-Canadian and
Pennsylvania Dutch are examples of such a mixture.]
STANDARDIZATION OF LANGUAGE. At the present time, and for
some time in the past, the differentiation of language has been
greatly lessened by the stabilizing influence of print. The
printed word continually recalls the standard pronunciation
and meaning, and the changes in language (save those deliberately
introduced by the addition of scientific terms, or the
official modifications of spelling, etc., as in some European
countries[2]) are much less rapid, various, and significant than
hitherto. It is true that differences in articulation and usage,
especially the former, do still, to a degree, persist and develop.
Our Southern accent, with its drawling of words and slurring
of consonants, our Middle-Western accent, with its stressed
articulation of "r's" and its nasalizing tendencies, are
instances of this persistence.
[Footnote 2: In France the Ministry of Education from time to time
settles points of orthography definitely.]
But the printed language--English, for example--the
official language, which is published in the newspapers, periodicals,
and books, which is taught in the schools, and spoken
from the pulpit, the platform, on the stage, in cultivated
society, is more or less alike all over the United States and
wherever English is spoken. It is, of course, only a standard,
a norm, an ideal, which like the concept of the circle, never
quite appears in practice. The language which is spoken,
even in the conversation of the educated, by no means conforms
to the ideal of "correct usage." But the important
fact is that the standard language _is_ a standard, that it is,
moreover, a widely recognized and effective standard. The
dictionaries and the grammars become authoritative, and are
referred to when people consciously set about discovering
what _is_ the accepted or correct meaning or pronunciation.
But a more effectual authority is exerted by the teaching they
receive at school, and the continuous, though unnoticed,
influence of the more or less standard language which they read
in print.
Even phonetic changes, though they persist, are checked
from spreading to the point of mutually unintelligible dialects
by the standards enforced in print. The "accents" in various
parts of the United States, for example, differ, but not to
the point of becoming absolutely divergent languages. The
Southerner and the Westerner may be conscious in each
other's speech of a quaint and curious difference in pronunciation,
but they can, except in extreme cases, completely
understand each other.[1]
[Footnote 1: Some of the isolated districts in the Kentucky mountains
reveal dialects with some important differences in vocabulary and
construction. These are shown most strikingly in some of the ballads
of that region which have been collected by William Aspinwall Bradley,
and by Howard Brockway. Rural schools and the breakdown of complete
isolation will probably in time eliminate this divergence.]
The most important stabilizing influence of print, however,
is its fixation of meanings. It makes possible their maintenance
uncorrupted and unmodified over wide stretches in
which there are phonetic variations. These variant articulations
in different parts of a large country where the same language
is spoken, would, if unchecked, eventually modify the
sense of words. Print largely prevents this from happening.
One can read newspapers published in Maine, California,
Virginia, and Iowa, without noticing any significant, or, in
many cases, even slight differences in vocabulary or construction.
There are, of course, local idioms, but these persist in
conversation, rather than in print, save where they are caught
up and exploited for literary purposes by a Bret Harte, a
Mark Twain, or an O. Henry.
COUNTER-TENDENCIES TOWARD DIFFERENTIATION. While the
_standard_ language does become fixed and stable, there are,
in the daily life of different social groups, varying actual
languages. Every class, or profession, every social group,
whether of interest, or occupation, has its slight individuality
in articulation or vocabulary. We still observe that members
of a family talk alike; sometimes households have literally
their own household words. And on different economic
and social levels, in different sports, intellectual, professional,
and business pursuits, we notice slightly different "actual"
languages. These partly overlap. The society lady, the
business man, the musician, the professor of literature, the
mechanic, have specializations of vocabulary and construction,
but there is, for each of them, a great common linguistic
area. Every individual's speech is a resultant of the various
groups with whom he associates. He is affected in his speech
habits most predominantly, of course, by his most regular
associates, professional and social. In consequence we still
mark out a man, as much as anything, by the kind of language
he speaks. The mechanic and the man of letters are
not likely to be mistaken for each other, if overheard in a
street car. Many literary and dramatic characters are memorable
for their speech habits. Such types are successful when
they do hit upon really significant linguistic peculiarities.
Their frequent failures lie in making the language of a particular
social type artificially stable. No one ever talks quite
as the conventional stage policeman, stage professor, and
stage Englishman talk.
These actual variations in the language, as it is used by
various groups who are brought up under the same standard
language, operate to prevent complete stabilization of language.
Such variations are remarkably influential, considering
the conservative influences upon language of the repeated
and continuous suggestion made by the printed page. The
language is, in the first place, being continually enriched
through increments of new words and modifications of old
ones, from the special vocabularies of trades, professions,
sciences, and sports. Through some accidental appositeness
to some contemporaneous situation, these may become generally
current. A recent and familiar example is the term
"camouflage," which from its technical sense of protective
coloration has become a universally understood name for
moral and intellectual pretense. The vocabulary of baseball
has by this time already given to the language words that
show promise of attaining eventual legitimacy. An increasingly
large source of enrichment of the native tongue comes
from the "spontaneous generation" of slang, which, starting
in the linguistic whimsicality of one individual, gets caught
up in conversation, and finds its ultimate way into the language.
Important instruments, certainly in the United
States, in spreading such neologisms are the humorous and
sporting pages of the newspapers, in which places they not
infrequently originate.[1] Whether a current slang expression
will persist, or perish (as do thousands initiated every year),
depends on accidents of contemporary circumstances. If the
expression happens to set off aptly a contemporary situation,
it may become very widespread until that situation, such as a
political campaign, is over. But it may, like the metaphor
of a poet, have some universal application. "Log-rolling,"
"graft," "bluff," have come into the language to stay.
Roosevelt's "pussy-foot," and "Ananias Club" are, perhaps,
remembered, but show less promise of permanency. "Movies"
has already ceased to be a neologism, its ready adoption
illustrating a point already mentioned, namely, that a variation
that facilitates speech (as "movies" does in comparison with
"moving pictures," or "motion pictures ") has a high potentiality
of acceptance.
[Footnote 1: H. L. Mencken in his suggestive book, _The American
Language_, sees in this upshoot of phrases indigenous to the
soil and the temper of the American people, and of grammatical
constructions also, symptoms of the increasing divergence of
the American from the English language. That there are a large
number of special expressions exclusively used in the United
States, and parts of the United States, that are not found in
use in England, goes without saying. Everyone knows that the
Englishman says "lift" where we say "elevator," "shop," where
we are likely to say "store." There are significant differences
to be found even in the casual expressions of American and
English newspapers. But it is doubtful whether the divergence
can go very far, in view of the constant intercommunication,
the rapidity of travel between the two countries, and the
promiscuous reading of English books in America, and American
books in England.]
LANGUAGE AS EMOTIONAL AND LOGICAL. Since language is
primarily useful as an instrument of communication, it should
ideally be a direct and clean-cut representation of experience.
It should be as unambiguous, and immediate, as telegraphy,
algebra, or shorthand. But language has two functions,
which interfere with one another. Words not only represent
logical relations; they provoke emotional responses. They
not only explicitly tell; they implicitly suggest. They are not
merely skeletons of thought; they are clothed with emotional
values. They are not, in consequence, transitive vehicles of
thought. Words should, from the standpoint of communication,
be mere signals to action, which should attract attention
only in so far as they are signals. They should be no more
regarded as things in themselves than is the green lamp which
signals a locomotive engineer to go ahead. They should be as
immediate signals to action as, at a race, the "Ready, set, go"
of the starter is to the runner. Yet this rarely happens in the
case of words. They frequently impede or mislead action by
arousing emotions irrelevant to their intellectual significance,
or provoke action on the basis of emotional associations rather
than on their merits, so to speak, as logical representations of
ideas.
To take an example: England, as an intellectual symbol,
may be said to be a name given to a small island bounded by
certain latitudes and longitudes, having a certain distribution
of raw materials and human beings, and a certain topography.
It might just as well be represented by X for all practical
purposes. Thus in the secret code of the diplomatic corps if
X were agreed on as the symbol for England, it would be just
as adequate and would even save time. But England (that
particular sound) for a large number of individuals who have
been brought up there, has become the center of deep and
far-reaching emotional associations, so that its utterance in
the presence of a particular listener may do much more than
represent a given geographical fact. It may be associated
with all that he loves, and all that he remembers with affection;
it may suggest landscapes that are dear to him, a familiar
street and house, a particular set of friends, and a cherished
historical tradition of heroic names and storied places. It
may arouse such ardor and devotion as Henley expresses in
his famous _England, my England_:
"What have I done for you,
England, my England,
What is there I would not do,
England, my own?
With your glorious eyes austere,
As the Lord were walking near,
Whispering terrible things and dear,
As the song on your bugles blown,
England--
Round the world on your bugles blown!"
Words thus become powerful provocatives of emotion.
They become loaded with all the energies that are aroused by
the love, the hate, the anger, the pugnacity, the sympathy,
for the persons, objects, ideas, associated with them. People
may be set off to action by words (just as a bull is set off by a
red rag), although the words may be as little freighted with
meaning as they are deeply weighted with emotion.
Poets and literary men in general exploit these emotional
values that cling to words. Indeed, in epithets suggesting
illimitable vistas, inexpressible sorrows, and dim-remembered
joys, lies half the charm of poetry.
"Before the beginning of years,
There came to the making of man,
Time with a gift of tears,
Grief with a glass that ran;
Pleasure with pain for a leaven,
Summer with flowers that fell;
Remembrance fallen from Heaven,
And madness risen from Hell,
Strength without hands to smite,
Love that endures for a breath,
Night the shadow of light,
And life, the shadow of death."[1]
[Footnote 1: Swinburne: _Atalanta in Calydon_ (David Mackay
edition), p. 393.]
Swinburne does not, to be sure, give us much information,
and what there is is mythical, but he uses words that are fairly
alive with suggested feeling.
But this emotional aura in which words are haloed, beautiful
though it is in literature, and facile though it makes the
communication of common feelings, is a serious impediment
in the use of words as effective instruments of communication.
Language oscillates, to speak metaphorically, between algebra
and music. To be useful as an instrument of thought it
should keep to the prosaic terseness of a telegraphic code. One
should be able to pass immediately from the word to the thing,
instead of dissolving in emotions at the associations that the
mere sound or music of the epithet arouses. Words should,
so to speak, tend to business, which, in their case, is the
communication of ideas. But words are used in human situations.
And they accumulate during the lifetime of the individual
a great mass of psychological values. Thus, to take
another illustration, "brother" is a symbol of a certain relationship
one person bears to another. "Your" is also a symbolic
statement of a relation. But if a telegram contains the
statement "Your brother is dead," it is less a piece of information
to act on than a deep emotional stimulus to which one
responds. Bacon long ago pointed out how men "worshipped
words." As we shall see presently, he was thinking of errors
in the intellectual manipulation of words. Perhaps as serious
is the inveterate tendency of men to respond to the more or
less irrelevant emotions suggested by a word, instead of to its
strict intellectual content. If the emotions stirred up by an
epithet were always appropriate to the word's significance,
this might be an advantage. But not infrequently, as we shall
see immediately, words suggest and may be used to suggest
emotions that, like "the flowers that bloom in the spring,"
have nothing to do with the case.
In practice, political and social leaders, and all who have
to win the loyalties and support of masses of men have appreciated
the use--and misuse--that might be made of the
emotional fringes of words. Words are not always used as
direct and transparent representations of ideas; they are as
frequently used as stimuli to action. A familiar instance is
seen in the use of words in advertisements. Even the honest
advertiser is less interested in giving an analysis of his product
that will win him the rational estimation and favor of the
reader than in creating in the reader through the skillful use of
words, emotions and sympathies favorable to his product.
The name of a talcum powder or tobacco is the subject of
mature consideration by the advertising expert, because he
knows that the emotional flavor of a word is more important
in securing action than its rational significance.[1] "Ask Dad!
He knows!" does not tell us much about the article it advertises,
but it gives us the sense of secure trust that we had as
a boy in those mysterious things in an almost completely unknown
world which our fathers knew and approved.
[Footnote 1: It has been pointed out that such an expression as
"cellar door," considered merely from the viewpoint of sound,
is one of the most romantically suggestive words in the English
language. A consideration of some of the names of biscuits and
collars will show a similar exploitation of both the euphony and
the emotional fringes of words.]
On a larger scale, in political and social affairs words are
powerful provocatives of emotion and of actions, determining
to no small degree the allegiances and loyalties of men and
the satisfaction and dissatisfactions which they experience in
causes and leaders. A word remains the nucleus of all the
associations that have gathered round it in the course of an
individual's experience, though the object for which it stands
may have utterly changed or vanished. This is illustrated in
the history of political parties, whose personnel and principles
change from decade to decade, but whose names remain stable
entities that continue to secure unfaltering respect and loyalty.
In the same way, the name of country has emotional
reverberations for one who has been brought up in its traditions.
Men trust old words to which they have become accustomed
just as they trust old friends. To borrow an illustration
from Graham Wallas, for many who call themselves
Socialists, Socialism is something more than
a movement towards greater social equality, depending for its force
upon three main factors, the growing political power of the working
classes, the growing social sympathy of many members of all classes,
and the belief, based on the growing authority of scientific method,
that social arrangements can be transformed by means of conscious
and deliberate contrivance.[1]
[Footnote 1: Wallas: _Human Nature in Politics._ p. 92.]
Rather
the need for something for which one may love and work has created
for thousands of workingmen a personified Socialism: Socialism, a
winged goddess with stern eyes and a drawn sword, to be the hope
of the world, and the protector of those that suffer.[2]
[Footnote 2: _Ibid._, p. 93.]
Political leaders and advertising experts, no less than poets,
have recognized the importance of the suggestive power of
words. Half the power of propaganda lies in its arousing of
emotions through suggestion, rather than in its effectiveness
as an instrument of intellectual conversion.[3]
[Footnote 3: During the recent Liberty Loan campaigns, for
example, when it was of the most crucial practical importance
that bonds be bought, the stimuli used were not in the form of
reasoned briefs, but rather emotional admonition:
"Finish the lob," "Every miser helps the Kaiser," "If you were
out in No Man's Land."]
LANGUAGE AND LOGIC. Even where words are freed from
irrelevant emotional associations, they are still far from being
adequate instruments of thought. To be effectively representative,
words must be clean-cut and definitive; they must
stand for one object, quality, or idea. Words, if they are to
be genuine instruments of communication, must convey the
same intent or meaning to the listener as they do to the
speaker. If the significance attached to words is so vague
and pulpy that they mean different things to different men,
they are no more useful in inquiry and communication than
the shock of random noise or the vague stir and flutter of
music. Words must have their boundaries fixed, they must
be terms, fixed and stable meanings, or they will remain instruments
of confusion rather than communication. Francis
Bacon stated succinctly the dangers involved in the use of
words:
For men imagine that their reason governs words, whilst in fact
words react upon the understanding; and this has rendered philosophy
and the sciences sophistical and inactive. Words are generally
formed in a popular sense, and define things by those broad
lines which are most obvious to the vulgar mind; but when a more
acute understanding or more diligent observation is anxious to vary
these lines, and adapt them more accurately to nature, words oppose
it. Hence the great and solemn disputes of learned men terminate
frequently in mere disputes about words and names, in regard to
which it would be better to proceed more advisedly in the first
instance, and to bring such disputes to a regular issue by definitions.
Such definitions, however, cannot remedy the evil ... for they consist
themselves of words, and these words produce others....
[Footnote 1: _Novum Organum_. bk. I, aphorism 59.]
If, to take an extreme case, a speaker said the word "chair,"
and by "chair" his listener understood what we commonly
mean by the word "table," communication would be impossible.
There must be some common agreement in the words
used. In the case of simple terms referring to concrete
objects there are continual concrete reminders of the meaning
of a word. We do not make mistakes as to the meaning of
words such as chair, river, stone, stove, books, forks, knives,
because we so continually meet and use them. We are continually
checked up, and the meanings we attach to these
cannot go far astray.
But the further terms are removed from physical objects,
the more opportunity is there for ambiguity. In the realm of
politics and morals, as Socrates was fond of pointing out, the
chief difficulties and misunderstandings of men have come
from the ambiguities of the terms they use. "Justice," "liberty,"
"democracy," "good," "true," "beautiful," these
have been immemorial bones of contention among philosophers.
They are accepted, taken for granted, without any
question as to their meaning by the individual, until he finds,
perhaps, in discussion that his acceptation of the term is
entirely different from that of his opponent. Thus many an
argument ends with "if that's what you mean, I agree with
you." Intellectual inquiry and discussion to be fruitful must
have certain definitive terms to start with.
Discussion ... needs to have the ground or basis of its various
component statements brought to consciousness in such a way as to
define the exact value of each. The Socratic contention is the need
compelling the common denominator, the common subject, underlying
the diversity of views to exhibit itself. It alone gives a sure
standard by which the claims of all assertions may be measured.
Until this need is met, discussion is a self-deceiving play with
unjudged, unexamined matters, which, confused and shifting, impose
themselves upon us.[1]
[Footnote 1: Dewey: _Essays in Experimental Logic_, p. 200.]
To define our terms means literally to know _what_ we are
talking about and what others are talking about. One of the
values of discussion is that it enables us more clearly to realize
the meaning of the words with which we constantly operate.
A man may entertain for a long while a half-conscious definition
of democracy as meaning political equality, and suddenly
come face to face with another who means by it industrial
coöperation and participation on the part of all workers.
Whether he agrees with the new definition or not, at least his
own becomes clearer by contrast.
"Science," wrote Condillac, "is a well-made language."
No small part of the technique of science lies in its clear definition
of its terms. The chemist knows what he means by an
"acid," the biologist by a "mammal." Under these names
he classifies all objects having certain determinable properties.
Social science will never attain the precision of the physical
sciences until it also attains as clear and unambiguous a
terminology. As we shall see in the chapter on science, however,
the definitions in the physical sciences are arrived at through
precise inquiries not yet possible in the field of social phenomena.