Morality and meaning.

The Philosophical Encounters lecture today dealt with semiotics and language, specifically how we can understand different words and how we attach meaning to those words, including how we as a species come to understand each other through language. In order to semi-prepare myself for the lecture, I watched the first episode of Stephen Fry’s “Planet Word”on BBC iPlayer, which takes a look into the background of language and how it has developed.

Stephen Fry talking about his series “Planet Word”

In the episode, Fry notes that it took roughly 50,000 years for language to evolve from grunts and that every language has similar grammatical tools to the concept of nouns, adjectives and verbs in the English language, using the language of the Turkana tribe as an example. In the scene, we are shown that the first words of a Turkana child are usually “father” and “mother”, similar to the first words most children will learn. Later in the episode, Fry shows that language is picked up in the early stages of a child’s development and so language at home is crucial to a child’s speech in later life. We are told that children pick up grammatical structures in the very early stages and this is proved through Jean Berko Gleason’s use of the wug test with a 4 year old girl. We are also given an example of a child, washing jam off his hands, using the phrase “All gone, sticky“. The child’s knowledge of certain words, combined with his creativity, allows him to create phrases that would be perfectly understood, even despite them not being known in conventional English language. However, language is not something an individual just learns, it is a skill that needs to be taught by others in order for it to evolve naturally. In the episode, Fry cites the case of Victor of Aveyron, a feral child who was taken into the care of Jean Marc Gaspard Itard who aimed to teach the child language, believing only two things separated humans from animals; empathy and language. However, Victor never learned to talk and speculation on the subject today suggests that Victor was simply too old to understand such a complicated procedure. This is similar to the difficulty involved in learning a foreign language; as our brains have matured knowing one language, it seems redundant to learn another.

From Wikipedia.

The study of communication between animals shows us that humans are not the only species to communicate. Although communication in animals does not have the complexity of a language such as English, studies have shown that there are various noises for alerting others of the species. We are told that, in apes, vocalisations are tied to emotion and that communication does not equal language. Fry also takes a brief look into the existence of the FOXP2 gene, noting that the gene exists in all mammals and that there is an obvious connection to language, as a mutation in this gene causes extreme speech problems in humans. The episode then leads us to sign language, considering the fact that a Chimpanzee, Nim Chimpsky, was taught American Sign Language in order to break down the language barrier. From “Project Nim”‘s recorded quotations, it would seem like that project was semi-successful, but the results found that Nim used this communication as a request for food and not to initiate conversation. It is thought that the hunt for food is what made human communication develop, as early humans would have had to collaborate to get food; Cries and grunts turned into words and phrases, essentially laying the basis for civilisation as we know it. But do we actually consider sign language a legitimate means of communication? Is it actually a language? Performers at the National Theatre of the Deaf in Connecticut maintain that American Sign Language (ASL) is a visual language, not just made up signs. They still use sentence structure and correct grammar, and there are different sign languages depending on the geographical area, including Makaton sign language, which is used with individuals who cannot effectively communicate otherwise, including those who suffer from cognitive impairments, autism, Down’s syndrome and specific language impairment.

Justin Fletcher, also known as Mr. Tumble, uses Makaton sign language
in the Cbeebies programme “Something Special”.

The most interesting thing, to me, about sign language is how it incorporates visual characteristics of an individual when referencing them. For instance, the ASL sign for “Barack Obama” is the shape of an “O” made with the hand, followed by the sign for “Flag”, referencing the American flag. The sign for “Hitler” is, quite humorously, two fingers held under the speakers nose; a reference to the moustache Hitler kept, with a “Heil” sign by the free hand. The ASL sign for “Madonna” is both hands making a point at chest height, a reference to Madonna’s cone bra and cementing the idea of visual characteristics in description of an individual. The episode also notes how languages become successful and well known, using an example of a father teaching his child Klingon as a first language. The scene shows that, as Klingon has no application in the real world, the need to speak the language becomes redundant and the child learnt to speak English. However, I only watched the episode to gain a background to what would be taught in the lecture.

In the lecture, the question of understanding words that do not have a physical representation was posed. How do we visualise words such as “mind”, “culture”, “under” and “history”? The answer is that such words are arbitrary; they are subject to individual judgement. Ludwig Wittgenstein, an Austrian philosopher, wrote in his book ‘Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus’;

The world is my world: this is manifest in the fact that the limits of language (of that language which alone I understand) mean the limits of my world.

The meaning of the phrase is that language comes between an individual and the objective world; If a person was to be told about a tree, they would have their own visualisation of a tree depending on previous experience. This tied in with the post I wrote concerning the Margritte piece “The treachery of images” and how a representation of something is not that which it represents.

We were also told about the difference in film language, where images and audio are used as a signifier, instead of text or just audio. Catherine Belsey notes that “realism is plausible not because it reflects the world, but because it is constructed out of what is (discursively) familiar“. However, to an extent I would disagree. For Belsey to say that realism is not a reflection of the world is absurd; Surely a reflection of the world is inherently familiar to an audience? While I agree that familiarity constitutes a large portion of building realism, there are other aspects to consider, especially in film language. A recent example of a technique used to build realism, seen in the Bourne film trilogy and the film United 93, is the use of “shaky camera”; a cinematic technique used to give the audience the impression that what they are watching is real, with a documentary-style feel. This, combined with the subject matter of United 93, almost fools the audience into believing the footage is real, as the film is literally reflecting previous events.

The lecture gave me a small insight into the problems we face with language but, as we had already covered the topic of semiotics in our first year on the course, I couldn’t help but feel that I already knew the topic. I’m glad that I took the time to watch Stephen Fry’s “Planet Word”, as it taught me about the origin of our language and the importance of communication in our everyday lives. I highly recommend the series, which is available on BBC iPlayer for a limited time and I look forward to future episodes.