# What would human life be like without language?



## Esmeralda (Dec 8, 2013)

> Nothingness
> 
> I woke up at night and my language was gone
> No sign of language no writing no alphabet
> ...



How might it be among our worst nightmares to wake up and find language gone?
How important is language to human beings?
The poem implies that we are dead the minute we lose language. In what way(s) is this  true? 
Having once acquired a language, is it ever possible for us really to stop talking? Once we
take on a language, can we ever really lose it?
If languages are systems of symbols, if one takes the symbol away, does not the thing itself remain?


----------



## dblack (Dec 8, 2013)

Geb


----------



## Unkotare (Dec 9, 2013)

The point is that we would no longer be human.


And no, you could not take it away.


----------



## midcan5 (Dec 9, 2013)

"You learned the concept 'pain' when you learned language." Ludwig Wittgenstein

Interesting speculative idea but all animals use some form of language. Anyone with a dog understands it after a while, and the dog understands a lot of words. Ears are an interesting evolutionary product. But consider the use of language as agitprop or the limits of language and that limit on what we know? That is the area in which the mind and the person exists. 

State conservative groups plan US-wide assault on education, health and tax | World news | theguardian.com

"The limits of my language are the limits of my mind. All I know is what I have words for." Ludwig Wittgenstein


"When we survey our lives and endeavours, we soon observe that almost the whole of our actions and desires is bound up with the existence of other human beings. We notice that our whole nature resembles that of the social animals. We eat food that others have produced, wear clothes that others have made, live in houses that others have built. The greater part of our knowledge and beliefs has been communicated to us by other people through the medium of a language which others have created. Without language our mental capacities would be poor indeed, comparable to those of the higher animals; we have, therefore, to admit that we owe our principal advantage over the beasts to the fact of living in human society. The individual, if left alone from birth, would remain primitive and beastlike in his thoughts and feelings to a degree that we can hardly conceive." Albert Einstein


"Language is a process of free creation; its laws and principles are fixed, but the manner in which the principles of generation are used is free and infinitely varied. Even the interpretation and use of words involves a process of free creation." Noam Chomsky 


"The world does not speak. Only we do. The world can, once we have programmed ourselves with a language, cause us to hold beliefs. But it cannot propose a language for us to speak. Only other human beings can do that."  Richard Rorty


"Language is legislation, speech is its code. We do not see the power which is in speech because we forget that all speech is a classification, and that all classifications are oppressive."  Roland Barthes


----------



## dblack (Dec 9, 2013)

midcan5 said:


> "You learned the concept 'pain' when you learned language." Ludwig Wittgenstein
> 
> Interesting speculative idea but all animals use some form of language. Anyone with a dog understands it after a while, and the dog understands a lot of words. Ears are an interesting evolutionary product. But consider the use of language as agitprop or the limits of language and that limit on what we know? That is the area in which the mind and the person exists.



And one might argue that's exactly why we're willing to credit dogs with a degree of consciousness.

One of the more interesting ideas for how intelligence and consciousness evolved posits the notion of 'auto-stimulation' as the source of thought. The idea being that the simplest kind of reaction would be for a brain to respond 'instinctively' to a sound. Perhaps the warning bark of a fellow pack member, for example. A brain could evolve to respond to different types of signals in different ways - to flee from danger, seek out food, etc... 

But how might a brain respond to it's own signals? - I don't have a lot of time today, but that sort of gives the basic idea. That suggestion is that thought began as the process of responding to our own auditory signals. Get enough feedback going on there and you have a conscious thinking brain.


----------



## Unkotare (Dec 9, 2013)

midcan5 said:


> Interesting speculative idea but all animals use some form of language.




No, all animals (and others) use some form of _communication_. Only humans use language.


----------



## Esmeralda (Dec 10, 2013)

Unkotare said:


> midcan5 said:
> 
> 
> > Interesting speculative idea but all animals use some form of language.
> ...



Isn't all communication a form of language?


----------



## midcan5 (Dec 10, 2013)

""Chasing Doctor Dolittle" is an easy read. Organized into nine chapters including "What is language?", "A New Theory of Language", "Let Me Love You", "Back off!", and "What's the Big Deal?" Slobodchikoff shows that we are not the only animals who use language. In addition to charming and highly verbal and linguistic prairie dogs, other animals including bees, squid, birds, bats, monkeys, whales possess languages of varying complexity. Prairie dogs, for example, have different alarm calls for the various predators who try to eat them, can describe the color of clothes, and can communicate about the body style (tall, thin, or short) of a human being. "

Dr. Dolittle To the Rescue: Animals Do Indeed Have Language | Psychology Today


----------



## Unkotare (Dec 10, 2013)

Esmeralda said:


> Unkotare said:
> 
> 
> > midcan5 said:
> ...




Nope.


----------



## Unkotare (Dec 10, 2013)

midcan5 said:


> ""Chasing Doctor Dolittle" is an easy read. Organized into nine chapters including "What is language?", "A New Theory of Language", "Let Me Love You", "Back off!", and "What's the Big Deal?" Slobodchikoff shows that we are not the only animals who use language. In addition to charming and highly verbal and linguistic prairie dogs, other animals including bees, squid, birds, bats, monkeys, whales possess languages of varying complexity. Prairie dogs, for example, have different alarm calls for the various predators who try to eat them, can describe the color of clothes, and can communicate about the body style (tall, thin, or short) of a human being. "
> 
> Dr. Dolittle To the Rescue: Animals Do Indeed Have Language | Psychology Today





Wrong Dolittle book. For something accessible to the lay reader but more accurate regarding the topic, try this one:

[ame=http://www.amazon.com/Doctor-Dolittles-Delusion-Uniqueness-Language/dp/0300115253/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1386684981&sr=8-1&keywords=Dr.+Dolittle+linguistics]Doctor Dolittle&#39;s Delusion: Animals and the Uniqueness of Human Language: Stephen R. Anderson: 9780300115253: Amazon.com: Books[/ame]

All animals communicate, but only humans really use language.


----------



## Peterf (Dec 10, 2013)

Esmeralda said:


> Unkotare said:
> 
> 
> > midcan5 said:
> ...



No.    A language can express any idea or emotion, describe any scene or object.   None of the very many kinds of communication used by other animals remotely fulfills these criteria.


----------



## Esmeralda (Dec 10, 2013)

Peterf said:


> Esmeralda said:
> 
> 
> > Unkotare said:
> ...



It seems to me the idea of language you describe makes you feel superior to other living beings.  

No one is trying to say other animals are equal to humans or the same as humans; that's not the point of the discussion. 

So you are saying only a method of communication that has symbols, letters, an alphabet, is language.  However, scientists tell us that body language accounts for most of human communication, and body language does not have an alphabet.


----------



## Unkotare (Dec 10, 2013)

Esmeralda said:


> Peterf said:
> 
> 
> > Esmeralda said:
> ...




In this sense, we are. In a variety of other ways, humans are inferior to other living beings.


----------



## Unkotare (Dec 10, 2013)

Esmeralda said:


> No one is trying to say other animals are equal to humans or the same as humans; that's not the point of the discussion.




It's not a matter of an agenda, it's just that "language" actually means something.


----------



## Unkotare (Dec 10, 2013)

Esmeralda said:


> So you are saying only a method of communication that has symbols, letters, an alphabet, is language.  However, scientists tell us that body language accounts for most of human communication, and body language does not have an alphabet.






A writing system is not the only, or a necessary, component of language. "Body language" is a figure of speech, not an actual language.


----------



## Lipush (Dec 10, 2013)

Esmeralda said:


> > Nothingness
> >
> > I woke up at night and my language was gone
> > No sign of language no writing no alphabet
> ...



There is no such thing as 'without language'.

Behavior is language. Emotions are language.

Words and letters are the most primitive 'language' of all.

Most creatures on earth today don't use them.

Deaf-mute can see past it.


----------



## Lipush (Dec 10, 2013)

Unkotare said:


> The point is that we would no longer be human.
> 
> 
> And no, you could not take it away.



So the deaf and mute aren't people?


----------



## Lipush (Dec 10, 2013)

Unkotare said:


> midcan5 said:
> 
> 
> > Interesting speculative idea but all animals use some form of language.
> ...



I guess that's true.


----------



## Unkotare (Dec 10, 2013)

Lipush said:


> Unkotare said:
> 
> 
> > The point is that we would no longer be human.
> ...





Deaf and mute people are not without language, and still possess the innate human capacity for it.


----------



## Peterf (Dec 10, 2013)

Esmeralda said:


> Peterf said:
> 
> 
> > Esmeralda said:
> ...



"So you are saying ..... " followed by a lot of things that I did NOT say.   I think there may be a word for this particular sort of lie.

Complex ideas can be expressed in words, spoken words.     They need not be written down.   And they cannot be communicated using body language alone.

Yep.  When it comes to language even you, Esmeralda, is indeed "superior to other living beings".


----------



## Delta4Embassy (Dec 18, 2013)

Given how violent we are able to understand one another, I think we'd be done in less than a year if we lost that ability.


----------



## Unkotare (Jun 28, 2015)

Unkotare said:


> The point is that we would no longer be human.
> 
> 
> And no, you could not take it away.




.


----------

