The Nature of Language

The Nature of Language

What is language? 

Do animals have language?

How does language impact on life in general or what impact does culture have on language?

Unless you have done a course of study that required you to consider these questions, you have probably never given any of them any thought at all. Yet, language is such an essential part of who we are as human beings that it warrants serious study and consideration. As teachers of English, we need to have a comprehensive understanding of the nature of language and how language functions in society.

We will begin our study of the nature of language by making a distinction between language and a language.

Here is a list of statements about language:

1.      Language facilitates thinking.

2.      Language is evident through speech sounds

3.      Language allows us to communicate with other human beings.

4.      Language allows us to formulate and express novel ideas.

L      Language changes with time

Are these statements about language itself or are they true of a language such as English or Spanish?

Language is a feature that is possessed by all human beings. We cannot see it but we know it exists because of our ability to think and communicate primarily through the production of speech sounds in individual languages. In West Indians and their Language, Peter Roberts puts it this way: 

"Language is an ability which every normal human being has and it allows him not only to communicate with other human beings but also with himself. It facilitates the transmission of ideas, emotions and desires from individual to individual and the refinement of the same within the individual." (1988, 3-4) 

A language is a distinctive system of speech sounds that is used by a group of people to communicate. This system of communication is mutually unintelligible with the systems of communication used by other speech communities.

Each system of communication or each language is a manifestation

of that human specific feature called language. Because of this, our

study of individual languages provides us with insight into

language.

Why are we saying that language is human specific?

It is a well known fact that animals do communicate. Animals of 

the same species communicate with each other; some produce 

meaningful sounds and some communicate with human beings.On

a superficial level one might say that they possess language. Do 

they really? Let's examine animal communication for a moment.

 Animals which possess a communication system, relate a very 

restricted number of messages on biologically determined matters. 

Usually these matters cover food, danger and mating. The forms of 

communication have remained unchanged over centuries. 

Furthermore, has a horse ever been known to bark or a cat neigh? Human beings are the only species that can formulate and express ideas about things that were never thought of or expressed by anyone else. Human beings, unlike other species, communicate about the past, the present, the future and the imaginary. The human system of communication, language, is extremely complex and no other system of communication has identical characteristics.

No single statement can fully capture the essence or nature of 

language. In response to a question such as, ‘what is language like 

or what is the nature of language? we have to look at a complex set 

of characteristics.

Linguistics, the study of language, has revealed the following 

characteristics of language:

Language is an internal feature that allows human beings to think 

and communicate primarily through the use of speech sounds. We 

talk in order to communicate with each other and in 

communicating we formulate and express novel ideas. By studying the language development of young children from various native languages, we know that language is located in the brain. It isinnate.

Because language development in children progresses gradually 

and in universally fixed stages, another characteristic that is 

ascribed to language is that it is maturational.

Language is systematic. In every language, sounds are combined 

in specific ways to form identifiable words and words are also combined in specific patterns to form sentences. Consider the following combination of sounds:

·         FHXET

·         SPTOV

·         VRIUQX

Apart from the fact that these combinations of sounds challenge our vocals, we recognize that they are not English words because the sound patterns are not possible in English. Suppose, now, that you saw the following groups of words on a billboard:

1.      Us realize let dreams you help your.

      Examinations hard who at students succeed study.

You are not likely to call them sentences because they are 

meaningless as they are. They do not follow any of the sentence 

patterns in English. They are only meaningful sentences in English 

when the words are re-arranged thus:

1.      Let us help you realize your dreams.

.      Students who study hard succeed at examinations.

Another defining characteristic of language is that it is arbitrary.There is no inherent connection between words and what they represent in language. Think about it: is there any inherent connection between the animal known as a cow in English and the word “cow”? Of course some words such as swish and hiss are onomatopoeic, but apart from onomatopoeic words, there is an arbitrary connection between words and what they represent.The sounds we produce in speech are symbols for things and concepts, Language is therefore symbolic.

Because language is arbitrary and symbolic in the sense 

explained above, it is also conventional. This means that users of 

a language have to follow the established rules of the language and 

use the sound symbols or words the speech community uses to 

represent things. In this sense, language can also be said to be non-

arbitrary. Language is also dynamic. Reading the works of 

William Shakespeare in the original language is a challenge for most students. This is because Shakespeare wrote in English but that English has changed considerably since the seventeenth century. Language is also creative. Think about the infinite number of sentences that one can produce and the infinite ways in which human beings can express the same idea. 

Here, then, is a list of all the characteristics we have mentioned:

1.                   innate

2.                   maturational

3.                   systematic

4.                   arbitrary

5.                   symbolic

6.                   conventional 

7.                   dynamic and

8.                   creative

Try applying these characteristics to any system of animal communication. How does it measure up?

Language is Human specific.