It took me a long time to begin writing this article. The hesitation resulted from attempting to write about a topic as fundamental as “language”. I’ve read a lot on this topic, Vygotsky, Saussure, Voloshinov, Marx, and other literatures commenting on their works. The more I read, the more I feel like the very nature of the topic is eluding my attempt to make any coherent expression. It wasn’t until I read the following lines in Marx’s German Ideology that I decided that I should begin writing, without too concerned about appearing coherent:
“The philosophers have only to dissolve their language into the ordinary language, from which it is abstracted, in order to recognize it as the distorted language of the actual world and to realize that neither thoughts nor language in themselves form a realm of their own, that they are only manifestations of actual life.”
To be precise, what I have learned about language, have repeatedly told me to avoid the trap of using the “correct” language, because there isn’t a Ding an sich as a correct language. There is only the language that we, as the speaker and the hearer construct during the process of seeking understanding, and in this case, the language that emerge from you trying to understand this passage and me attempting to make sense to an audience of an assumed nature.
Using language (to write or to speak) is a process of the thought becoming aware of itself, or rather, the materialization of thought, and the externalization of an internal dialogue. It is necessary, for without a social context, a thought does not exist. As such, this article should be read not as a product of a thought, but as part of the thinking process. It is at the same time, the result of a thought, part of the thinking process, and the creation of a new thinking.
Before we attempt to understand the phenomenon that is language, it is necessary to make the following distinction: Language is not speech. Speech is a form of language, but language contains other non-verbal component (what is commonly known as body language), and in the case of sign language, it is possible to have a completely non-verbal language. This distinction must be bore in mind throughout the discussion.
The simplest way to understand language is via its purpose and origin. Language was created to fulfill the need for communication between two social entities. This is both its purpose and its origin. In its very first instance, language assume a social environment, where a group of people live together and have needs to regulate their activities via communication. Language is the natural result of such a social environment. This is the first nature of language: it is social. It only exists between (in the case of a verbal language) a speaker and a hearer. But wait a minute, don’t we use language as a single person? To think, or to write? Isn’t it possible to learn a new language on one’s own? These two questions correspond to two important relations of language: that of language and mind, and that of language and grammar.
The relation between language and mind is one of the most important relation for language. One could say it is the fundamental relation. The simple version is that language IS mind. Hitherto, we have always assume that there is such a thing called “mind” that resides with or within a person, and it exists for each individual and is the origin of all of the person’s activities, including the acquiring and using of language. This view of mind is commonly accepted and widely assumed, and contains some truth in it, if too simplified and incomplete. I prefer to explain human mind as the sum of all a person’s social interactions. In that sense, every individual possess a unique mind, because the social experience of every person is different, and this experience does inform the person’s subsequent behavior. However, it is inaccurate to assume a mind precedes language. It is more accurate to say that through social interactions, a mind/language develops. Think about all activities which you associate with the mind; in all instances, you cannot disassociate language with these activities: When you think, you carry out an internal dialogue. When you write, you assume an audience. When you see an object, feel an emotion, you immediately associate it with words: that object is round, small, red, looks heavy. I feel happy, sad, scared. But wait a minute, are you saying we need language to feel? That is simply not true! Here, we need to have a quick foray into the relation between mind and the senses.
It is true we feel before being able to articulate the feeling. Senses are the pre-lingual root of the mind. It is our biological mechanism which enables the formation of language. Senses allow us to perceive the material world, but they by themselves do not allow us to “make sense” of the material world. To “make sense”, language is needed, which presupposes a social environment. In short, senses form the biological circumstance and pre-condition to our social achievement, but by themselves, they don’t equate the mind, which is a social construct.
But if a mind doesn’t precede language, how then do we learn about language? How do we learn about a language’s grammar? To answer these questions, we must look at things from a few perspective. The first, is looking at language and grammar as generic concepts. Logically, which occurred first? The “language” or the “grammar”? Intuitively, can you imagine a set of “grammar” which existed before the emergence of “language”? Grammar presuppose language, not the other way around. Grammar is simply a set of rules and characteristic particular to and common for a language. Grammar is embedded in a language, with or without formal theorized expressions, since it is the internal logic of a language. Grammar exist as an integral, inherent component of language. We label them differently to illustrate their differences, but it is wrong to treat them as two separate entities which can exist independently.
With that firmly in mind, we should briefly examine the topic of language acquisition for a person, which is a whole field of study in its own right. When a person acquire language, especially the first language, he does so socially, i.e. via interacting with the people around him. At that stage, language is learned based on functionality and effects, not the grammar. To be sure, grammar is also acquire as part of the language, but the person is not aware of grammar as a separate concept. It is only later when the person study about language or another language that grammar becomes apparent. In fact, grammar can only become apparent when a language comes into contact with a foreign language.
Many topics within this article warrant further study, but for now, we should pause and review what we have examined thus far. First, we examined the relation between language and mind, and propose that language IS mind. Second, we examined the relation between language and grammar, and propose grammar as internal and inherent to language, and rather then language being bound by grammar, it should be the other way around.
Many of these conclusions have further implications in how we think about the world, and we will examine those in subsequent articles.