Have you ever wondered about language? If you're normal, probably not; most people don't think about such things. But nonetheless, some understanding of the basic structure of language is important. What are its limitations? How does it work anyway? So let's reason about this, and we'll see how many linguists we can anger with our amateur grasp of the subject.
What's the point of language? More importantly, what's the point of communication? After all, language is simply one of many forms of communication. In humans, language is supplemented with nonverbal cues, like posture or facial motions, connotative clues like vocal inflection and even purely nonverbal communication. In other animals, language as we know it does not exist, but they often communicate with body language and verbal cues.
As social creatures, we need to find a way to pass propositions from one to another. We're not capable of reading each other's minds, so we have to create and agree upon symbols in order to represent ideas. This is the basic idea of all forms of communication: tacit agreement of symbols.
Some symbols can be agreed upon simply because all humans share a common set of experiences. For example, approaching someone with your hands held up, palms forward, indicates that you do not wish to be thought a threat because the use of hands for wielding weapons is pretty generally a human trait. (One can conceive, however; of a species or set of customs where approaching in such a manner is considered threatening.) For a further example, consider how some form of communication between cultures is possible even at the moment of first contact.
Such implicit communication works because, as I stated, we are operating from a common set of experiences; we therefore tend to agree on a common set of symbols because we are able to sympathize with each other. Such communication works for, and is found in, most species of social animals: other apes, dogs, elephants and monkeys, to name a few.
This method of symbol-making carries over to verbal, and hence written, communication. After all, nothing about the noises "pro puh zi shun" inherently means "a sentence that is either true or false." All English speakers, however; have tacitly agreed that the word "proposition" means something like "a sentence that is either true or false." This tacit agreement generally serves us well for informal conversation and communication, but there are several important circumstances where it breaks down.
The first is where jargon comes from. As our knowledge grows more precise, our written and verbal communication becomes insufficient to communicate with each other. Generally, people in a particular field of specialization develop precisely defined terms in order to enhance the precision of communication. Then, these terms are shortened and made informal; even so, they're generally not accessible to laymen. For instance, in physics, I can talk about the fact that the exchange-correlation hole in electron density is proportional to the density itself only in the limit where the gradient and Laplacian are small. This sentence is meaningful; all the terms are well-defined, but most people don't know what they mean.
The second is relevant to everyone's life, especially if one is in a relationship. Words' definitions-the relationship between symbol and idea-are broadly defined, but different cultural, social and even familial backgrounds can often imbue words with very different connotative and even denotative meanings. For example, in my family, if I want a younger brother to sweep the floor, I'd say, "Gabe, go get a broom and sweep the kitchen floor." In my wife's family, however; her mother might say, "Ben, the kitchen floor is getting pretty dirty." Both sentences mean "please sweep the floor," but they are entirely different ways of saying it. So differences in understood meaning can cause tension because the agreement on symbols breaks down and communication does not occur.
Ultimately, communication is simply a method of getting ideas to and from each other by attaching an agreed-upon meaning to otherwise meaningless symbols. This has worked pretty reliably, but the lack of precision and the spread of understood meanings can cause miscommunication. Understanding the limitations of language can only enhance your relationships and understanding of the world.
Write to Neal at necoleman@bsu.edu
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