Language is much more than the external expression and communication of internal thoughts formulated independently of their verbalization. In demonstrating the inadequacy and inappropriateness of such a view of language, attention has already been drawn to the ways in which one’s native language is intimately and in all sorts of details related to the rest of one’s life in a community and to smaller groups within that community. This is true of all peoples and all languages; it is a universal fact about language.

1. Introduction to language & culture
Boutkhil Guemide
University Mohammed Boudiaf,
M’sila
Algeria

2. • A broad perspective on human and animal
communicative behavior
• Human communication: An overview.
• What is language? (Speech- Lge. Vs Dialect)
• Hypotheses about the origin of language
OUTLINE

3. INTRODUCTION
• Social life is primarily based on interaction and communication between the members of the
community
• Communication: an important tool in society to transmit knowledge, beliefs, habits, … etc.
• Communication: Human Vs. Non-human
• Non- human communication: Animal communication
• Communication is crucial for survival in animals’ life as it is in humans.
• Charles Darwin: “The ability of a species to exchange information or signals about its
environment is an important factor in its biological survival”
• Animals’ Lge: What is it?
• Animals have their own way of communication; Their own language or not.
• They communicate among themselves in different ways.
• Honey bees’ systems of navigation, communication, and social organization.
• Bees rely primarily on the sun as a reference point for navigation.
• Bees use the patterns of ultraviolet polarized light in the sky to determine the sun’s location.
• Bees automatically dance and turn around when they find and locate the nectar on flower.
• Vervet monkeys use distinct calls to signal the presence of different predators.
• Sparrows has three flight calls and two types of danger calls.

4. Human Vs. Animal communication
Human Animal
Duality of Patterning Distinctive sounds are arbitrary and have no meaning.
Other animals do not communicate by arranging arbitrary
sounds, which limit the number of messages they can
create.
Creativity New words can be invented easily. Animals have to evolve in order for their signs to change.
Displacement
Humans can talk about remote, abstract, or imaginary
things that are not happening in their immediate
environments.
Animal communication is context driven—they react to
stimuli.
Interchangeability Any gender of human can use the same languages.
Certain animal communications in the animal world can
only be used by one gender of that animal.
Cultural Transmission
Humans acquire language culturally—words must be
learned.
The way that animals communicate are biological, or
inborn.
Arbitrariness
Human language is symbolic, using a set number of
sounds (phonemes) and characters (alphabet), which
allow ideas to be recorded and preserved.
Animal communication is not symbolic, so it cannot
preserve ideas of the past.
Biology
On a purely biological level, the human voice box and
tongue are very unique, and are required to make the
sounds we recognize as language.
Other animals have different biological structures, which
impact they way they make sounds.
Ambiguity A word, or sign, can have several meanings. Every sign has only one meaning.
Variety
Human language can arrange words into an infinite
number of ideas, sometimes referred to as discrete
infinity.
Animals only have a limited number of combinations they
can use to communicate.

5. Human communication: An overview
• Communication is at the heart of our everyday lives; it is a ubiquitous
phenomenon (as we all communicate nearly every minute of every day of our
lives). Besides, communication is an activity that equally exists in the world of
animals (even plants).
• Hybels & Weaver (2005), ‘… communication, …, is so important to daily life that
it has spawned an entire industry of books, articles, and seminars explaining
how to do it better’.
• It is the art of persuading, influencing, entertaining, sharing, discovering and
transmitting information; We are either senders, or receivers of messages.
• Communication is acclaimed the most precious gift given to human race by the
Creator.
• Communication involves choices about the multitude aspects of the message–
verbal, nonverbal, and behavioral aspects, the choices surrounding the
transmission, channel used, the characteristics of the message source, the
relationship between the source and the receiver, the characteristics of the
receiver, and the context in which the communication occurs.
•

6. • The notion that there is more to meaning than just words further attests to the fact that
communication is but a complicated phenomenon. A change in anyone of the variables is
consequential upon the entire communication process.
• Brown & Yule (1983): ‘Interactional Function’ of communication. Language is used only to establish
and maintain relationship rather than exchanging information.
• Halliday (1978): ‘Interpersonal Function’ of communication.
• Malinowsky (in Palmer, 1996) & Jacobson (1960): Phatic Communion. It is worthy of note that a great
deal of everyday human communication is characterized by primarily interpersonal rather than the
transactional use of language.
• Burgoon & Ruffner (1978), “Any communication activity that has the goal of satisfying the
communicator without any necessary intent to affect anyone else is consummatory in nature.
Hence, when a communicator finds a certain amount of satisfaction simply by communicating or
engages communication personally to gratify certain needs rather than to affect or influence others,
the consummatory purpose of communication is involved.”
• The personal nature of communication brings into force the place of meaning in human
communication. Communication involves meaning which is ‘the shared understanding of the
message’ (Pearson et al, 2003).
• Odebunmi (2006) provided a broader definition of meaning:
The knowledge gained from a synthesis of users’ interactions with the linguistic forms engaged
in communication, the contexts in which the linguistic forms appear, the hearers’ access to
speakers’ intentions and totality of the experiences of participants in communication.

7. • John Fiske (1990), ‘Communication is one of those human activities that everyone
recognizes, but few can define satisfactorily’.
• Over the years, scholars have created hundreds of definitions of communication.
• Theodore Clevenger (1991), in his article “Can one not Communicate? A Conflict of Models”
wrote of the problem in defining communication:
The continuing problem in defining communication for scholarly or scientific purposes
stems from the fact the verb “to communicate” is well established in the common lexical
and therefore is not easily captured for scientific use. Indeed, it is one of the most
overworked terms in the English Language.

8. • Theodore Clevenger (1991) has set three dimensions for the term communication:
Level of
Observation/
Abstraction
This dimension focuses on the inclusiveness,
generalizability or how broad the definition is.
Some definitions are broad while others are
inclusive; specific and not too general
definition.
Communication is the process that links
discontinuous parts of the living world to one
another;
Communication is the means of sending military
messages, orders as by telephone, telegraph, radio
or courier (American College Dictionary).
Intentionality Some definitions include purposeful message
sending and receiving while some simply do
not emphasis the purpose.
Communication refers to those situations in which a
source transmit a message to a receiver with
conscious intent to affect the latter’s behaviors. -
Gerald Miller
Communication is a process that makes common to
two or several what was the monopoly of one or
some.
Normative
Judgment
Some definitions include a statement of
success or accuracy while some other
definitions do not contain such implicit
judgment.
Communication is the verbal interchange of a
thought or idea.
Communication is the transmission of information.

9. • Burgoon & Ruffner (1978) categorized two similar dimensions in defining
communication: Source- oriented definitions Vs. Receiver-oriented definitions.
• The Source-oriented definitions suggest that communication is all activities in which
a person (the source) intentionally transmits stimuli to evoke a response. They share
attributes of intentionality and purpose with the Second dimension.
• Miller and Steinberg (1975):
We have chosen to restrict our discussion of communication to intentional symbolic
transactions: those in which at least one of the parties transmits a message to another with the
purpose of modifying the other’s behavior (such as getting him to do or not to do something or
to believe or not to believe something). By our definition, intent to communicate and intent to
influence are synonymous. If there is no intent, there is no message.
• On the other hand, Receiver-oriented definitions view communication as all activities
in which a person (the receiver) responds to a stimulus. With these sorts of
definitions, human communication has occurred when a human being responds to a
symbol. It also implies that communication can be provided intentionally or
unintentionally and responded to accordingly. The problem with receiver-oriented
definition is that it is so broad that it only rules non-symbolic behavior as
communication.

10. • Pearson et al (2003): The process by which meaning is exchanged between individuals
through a common system of symbols, signs, or behavior.
• Sharing of meaning: an important aspect of human communication.
• “Communication”: originated from Latin word Communicare: “share” and in as
much as it presupposes a communicator and a receiver, relationship between them– a
mutual awareness or orientation of one another, intent of the communicator; an
external referent – what the message is about, a common language and some sharing
of experience, we cannot contend with such a definition.
• A careful analysis of the keywords in this definition gives us a full grasp of the
intricacies enshrined in the concept of communication. These keywords are process,
meaning, exchange and system of symbols, signs or behavior.
• One of the clearest statement about communication as a process is provided by Berlo
(1960):
If we accept the concept of process we view events and relationships as
dynamic, ongoing, ever changing, and continuous. When we label something as
a process, we also mean that it does not have a beginning, an end or a fixed
sequence of events. It is not static, at rest. If is moving. The ingredients within a
process interact; each affects all the others.

11. • So, what are the components/ or variables in the process of communications?
• These are respectively (1) the source (Sender/ or Encoder of message), (2) the
message, (3) the channel and Medium, (4) the Receiver, (5) the Feedback, and (6)
Noise.
• These components operate in a six- step process which begins with the creation of
message, selection of the appropriate channel/or medium and then sending it to
another individual, organization or a group of people. The source creates the
message.
• The receiver, on the other hand, is the person to which the message is targeted. i.e.
The message final destination. Hence, the receiver performs the tripartite functions of
receiving, interpreting, and responding to the message.

12. • Communication also involves meaning exchange: The shared understanding knowledge of
the message (or shared/mutual experience of the code; language or nonverbal signs).
• Understanding the meaning of another person’s message does not occur unless the two
communicators (sender and receiver of a message) can elicit common or mutual meanings
for words, phrases, and nonverbal codes.
• So, when language is put into use, meaning facilitates an appropriate response that
indicates that the message is understood.
• Meaning also requires the understanding the contexts of interaction: the environment–
physical/ or psycho- sociological environment in which the communication takes place.
• Meaning can equally be exchanged, or negotiated in communication through asking
questions about the message, especially when communicators have little shared
experience.
• Using language in communication entails the use of systems of symbolic representation.
• The two basic dimensions for this representation are the VERBAL and NON- VERBAL of
language through which communicators can be described.
• Thus, language, which exists primarily as verbal and non- verbal codes, becomes an
important tool/ or part of communication.
• Verbal codes: The spoken & the written words.
• Non- verbal codes: All symbols that are not words. i.e. they include body movements;
use of space and time, human sounds other than words (vocal pauses/ paralanguage).

13. Contexts of communication
• In the field of communication, four contexts are recognized.
• They are the intrapersonal, interpersonal, public and mass communication.
Intrapersonal It considers communication within oneself
Interpersonal It is the personal process of coordinating meaning between at least two people in a
situation that allows mutual opportunities for both speaking and listening (Pearson et al.,
2003). It occurs for a variety of reasons to (1) solve problems, (2) resolve conflicts, (3)
share information, (4) improve one’s perception, or to (5) fulfill social needs. Through
this context, people are able to establish relationships with others (friendships and
romantic relationships).
Public It involves the process of generating meaning in a situation where a simple source
transmits a message to a number of receivers (often range between 3 to 12 people, or
more) who give non-verbal and sometimes, question and answer feedback. This kind of
communication is recognized by its formality, structure and planning (Examples:
lectures, seminars, conferences, direct speeches and religious services).
Mass
communication
It is a context between a source and a large number of unseen receivers. In this
context, there is always a mediator between the source and the receiver. The mediator
is often in the communication technology; such as, television and radio. They are the
channel and the method of distribution.

14. What is language?
• Human beings can laugh to express amusement, happiness, or disrespect, we can smile to
express amusement, pleasure, approval, or bitter feelings, we can shriek to express anger,
excitement, or fear, we can clench our fists to express determination, anger or a threat, we can
raise our eyebrows to express surprise or disapproval, and so on.
• Our system of communication before anything else is language.
• We communicate with each other to exchange knowledge, beliefs, opinions, wishes, threats,
commands, thanks, promises, declarations, and feelings.
• Communication by means of language may be referred to as linguistic communication, the
other ways mentioned above– laughing, smiling, shrieking, and so on– are types of non-
linguistic communication.
• Linguistic Vs. nonlinguistic communication: meaning, articulation, and syntax.
• In the Universe, all types of communications, knowledge sharing, expressing feelings and
emotions, exchanging and excommunicating different ideas are conducted through dialogues
and conversations.
• Language: the melting pot which holds all these social components.
• Language: a system for communication, in symbols, of any kind of information.
• Language: is it truly a means of communication?
• Language: a system of communication based upon words combined into sentences.
• Language: an exclusively human property (Chomsky).

15. • Individual speech sounds are meaningless noises until some
regularity is added.
• The relationship between individual sounds, meaningful sound units,
and the combination of these units is specified by the rules of
language.
• Language is a system of words or signs that people use to express
thoughts and feelings to each other (Merriam- Webster)
• Language: a socially shared code/ or conventional system for
representing concepts through the use of arbitrary symbols and rule-
governed combinations of those symbols.
• Language: The method of human communication, either spoken or
written, consisting of the use of words in a structured and
conventional way.
• Language is a system of communication, a medium for thought, and
a social interaction.

16. The nature of language

17. Language is a combination of sounds.

18. 2
Words have meanings

19. Meaning are in people not in words.
• Because of this, you must not only
consider your interpretation of the word,
but also the meaning the communicator is
trying to get through

20. • Did you know that “set” is the word with the
most number of meanings?
• Noun: 58
• Verb: 126
• Adjective: 10

21. Language follows a grammatical structure.

22. Language is based on aural and oral system.

23. Language can die and be extinct.

24. Language can be diverse.

25. The Characteristics of Language

41. 41
Language is learned
• Animal communication is innate
• Human babies must hear and speak a language
in order to learn it

42. The Origins
of Language

43. • 800 years ago: The inhabitants of forests and cavemen
were ape-like creatures; they were living in trees, and used
a vocal communication system limited to twenty/ or thirty
calls.
• What sort of language did they have?
• The origin of language is a puzzle.
• Eighteenth- century thinkers; such as, Rousseau, Condillac,
and Herder were not able to arrive at worthwhile
conclusions about how language must have arisen.
• The Linguistic Society of Paris (1866) emphasized its
seriousness as a scholarly body by including in its statutes
a ban on the presentation of any papers concerning the
origin of language.

44. The Theories
•Divine Creation Theory
• Natural Evolution Theory
•Invention/ Imitation Theory:
• The “Ding- dong” hypothesis
• The “Pooh- pooh” hypothesis
• The “Bow- wow” hypothesis
• The “Ta-ta” hypothesis

45. Sources of Language
The Invention/
Imitation
Theory
The Divine
Creation Theory
The Natural
Evolution Theory

46. The
Divine
Creation
Theory

47. • In most religions, there appears to be a divine source that
provides humans with language.
• In an attempt to rediscover this original divine language, a few
experiments have been carried out, with rather conflicting
results.
• The basic hypothesis seems to have been that, if human
infants were allowed to grow up without hearing any language
around them, then they would spontaneously begin using the
original God- given language.
• Ibn Abbass & Ibn Taimia.
• Heralcut (480. B. C.) & Pére Lami (1711).

49. • 30. Behold, Thy Lord said to the angels: "I will create a vicegerent
on earth." They said: "Wilt Thou place therein one who will make
mischief therein and shed blood?- whilst we do celebrate Thy
praises and glorify Thy holy (name)?" He said: "I know what ye
know not."
• 31. And He taught Adam the nature of all things; then He placed
them before the angels, and said: "Tell me the nature of these if ye
are right."
• 32. They said: "Glory to thee, of knowledge we have none, save
what Thou hast taught us: In truth it is Thou who art perfect In
knowledge and wisdom."
• 33. He said: "O Adam! Tell them their natures." when He had told
them, Allah said: "Did I not Tell you that I know the secrets of
heaven and earth, and I know what ye reveal and what ye
conceal?"

50. • In the biblical tradition: “God created Adam and whatsoever Adam called every
living creature that was the name thereof.”
• Hindu tradition: language came from Sarasvati, wife of Brahma, creator of the
universe.
• Herodotus: 2,500 years ago, an Egyptian pharaoh, Psammetichus (or Psamtik),
tried the experiment with two newborn babies.
• After two years of isolation except for the company of goats and a mute
shepherd, the children were reported to have spontaneously uttered something
identified as the Phrygian word bekos, meaning “bread.”
• The pharaoh concluded that Phrygian, an older language spoken in part of what
is modern Turkey, must be the original language.
• The children may not have picked up this “word” from any human source; They
must have heard what the goats were saying.
• King James the Fourth of Scotland carried out a similar experiment around the
year 1500 and the children were reported to have spontaneously started
speaking Hebrew, confirming the King’s belief that Hebrew had indeed been the
language of the Garden of Eden.

51. The Invention/
Imitation
Theory

52. “ding-dong” hypothesis
“pooh-pooh” hypothesis
“bow-wow” hypothesis
“ta-ta” hypothesis

53. • The beginnings of language is based on the concept
of natural sounds.
• The human auditory system is already functioning
before birth (at around seven months).
• This early processing capacity develops into an
ability to identify sounds in the environment, allowing
humans to make a connection between a sound and
the thing producing that sound.
• Primitive words derive from imitations of the natural
sounds that early men and women heard around
them.
• Jespersen (1922): the “bow- wow” theory.

54. The (Bow- wow) Hypothesis
• The primitive sounds have been imitations of the natural sounds which early men
and women heard around them.
• When an object flew by , making a caw- caw sound, the early human tried to
imitate the sound and used it to refer to the thing associated with the sound.
• Similarly by hearing coo-coo sound the early man might have identified the bird
with sound.
• The fact that all modern languages have some words with pronunciations that
seem to echo naturally occurring sounds could be used to support this theory.
• The words like cuckoo, splash, bang , boom, rattle, buzz, hiss, screech and forms
such as bow-wow.
• Words that sound similar to the noises they describe: onomatopeia.
• While it is true that a number of words in any language are onomatopoeic, it is
hard to see how most of the soundless things as well as abstract concepts could
have been referred to in a language that simply echoed natural sounds.
• Is language only a set of words used as “names” for things?

55. (Pooh – Pooh) Hypothesis
• Humans’ first words were derived from spontaneous expressions of dislike,
hunger, pain, or pleasure.
• Speech developed from the instinctive sounds people make in emotional
circumstances.
• The original sounds of language may have come from natural cries of
emotion such as pain, anger and joy.
• Ouch! came to have its painful connotations.
• Ha-ha-ha, wah- wah
• Problems: Very small part of any language.
• Differ from language to language: English ouch; Russian oi; Cherokee eee,
Basque ai
• But Ouch! and other interjections such as Ah!, Ooh!, Phew!, Wow! or Yuck!
are usually produced with sudden intakes of breath, which is the opposite of
ordinary talk.
• Made with intake of breath, which is the opposite of normal talking.

56. (Ding- Dong) Hypothesis
• The “ding-dong” hypothesis bases the origins of language on onomatopoeia.
• “Ding-Dong” – humans named objects, actions and phenomena after a recognizable
sound associated with it. The first human words were a type of ICON, a sign whose
form is an exact image of its meaning:
Boom = explosion (English)
Tun-tun = heart (Chinook Indian)
Ai-ai = knife (Basque, literally “ouch-ouch”)
• These represent the sounds of certain objects, but it is unclear how to provide
onomatopoeia for silent objects.
• It also does not consider abstract ideas like love or justice, as there are no sounds
for these words.
• This hypothesis does not supply words for grammar or abstract items in the English
language, so it is not hard to imagine that these types of words are unusual and rare
in most languages.
• Onomatopoeia is such a small part of linguistics and varies greatly from language to
language.

57. • “Ta- ta” Hypothesis:
• Charles Darwin theorized that speech may have
developed as a sort of mouth pantomime
• The organs of speech were used to imitate the gestures of
the hand. The first words were lip icons of hand gestures.
• Same problem as for onomatopoeia: Different gestures
in different cultures: crossing fingers for good luck in
English versus Russian “fig” gesture; nodding “no” in
Greek versus “yes” in English

58. The Natural Evolution Theory:
“Necessity is the mother of
invention”

59. Yo-he-ho Hypothesis
• The development of human language in a social context.
• Early people must have lived in groups, if only because larger groups offered better
protection from attack. Groups are necessarily social organizations and, to maintain
those organizations, some form of communication is required.
• A group of early humans might develop a set of hums, grunts, groans and curses
that were used when they were lifting and carrying large bits of trees or lifeless hairy
mammoths.
• The sounds of a person involved in physical effort could be the source of language,
especially when that physical effort involved several people and the interaction had
to be coordinated.
• So, human sounds were produced must have had some principled use within the life
and social interaction of early human groups.
• It does not, however, answer the question regarding the origins of the sounds
produced.
• Apes and other primates live in social groups and use grunts and social calls, but
they do not seem to have developed the capacity for speech.

60. Primitive man hunting a mammoth

61. • The “Warning Hypothesis”: Language evolved from the
warning signals used by animals.
• Perhaps language started with a warning sound to others
that signified “HELP!” or “RUN!” to alert other members to
the approach of a lumbering hairy mammoth or hungry
saber-tooth tiger.
• Other first words could have been hunting instructions.

62. • The “Lying” Hypothesis:
• Sturtevant: “Since all our real intentions or emotions get
involuntarily expressed by gesture, look, or sound,
voluntary communication must have been invented in
order to lie or deceive”.
• The need to deceive and lie– to use language in contrast
to reality for selfish ends– was the social prompting that
got language started.