Module 36 Thinking and Language
Imagine an alien species that could pass thoughts from one head to another merely by pulsating air molecules in the space between them. Perhaps these weird creatures could inhabit a future science fiction movie? Actually, we are those creatures! When we speak, our brain and voice apparatus transmit air pressure waves that we send banging against another’s eardrum—enabling us to transfer thoughts from our brain into theirs. As cognitive scientist Steven Pinker (1998) noted, we sometimes sit for hours “listening to other people make noise as they exhale, because those hisses and squeaks contain information.” And thanks to all those funny sounds created in our heads from the air pressure waves we send out, we get people’s attention. We get them to do things. And we maintain relationships (Guerin, 2003). Depending on how you vibrate the air, you may get a scowl or a kiss.
Language is more than vibrating air—it is our spoken, written, or signed words, and the ways we combine them to communicate meaning. When I [DM] created this paragraph, my fingers on a keyboard generated electronic binary numbers that were translated into the squiggles in front of you. When transmitted by reflected light rays into your retina, these squiggles trigger formless nerve impulses that travel to several areas of your brain, which integrate the information, compare it to stored information, and decode meaning. Thanks to language, information is moving from my mind to yours. Many animals know little more than what they sense. Thanks to language, we comprehend much that we’ve never seen and that our distant ancestors never knew. Today, notes Daniel Gilbert (2006), the average taxi driver in Pittsburgh “knows more about the universe than did Galileo, Aristotle, Leonardo, or any of those other guys who were so smart they only needed one name.”
Language transmits knowledge Whether spoken, written, or signed, language—the original wireless communication—enables mind-to-mind information transfer, and with it the transmission of civilization’s accumulated knowledge across generations.
Let’s begin our study of language by examining some of its components.
“ The secret to our ancestors’ survival was probably our use of language to develop new modes of cooperation.”
David Grinspoon, “Can Humans Outsmart Extinction?” 2016