Linguistics: its unawareness and disinterest among the general public
Language is a system of thought, not a system of communication:
Chomsky was asked “what is the most interesting insight the science of linguistics has revealed,
but that the public at large seems to not know about or appreciate it” (Talks at Google, 2014,
13:09)? To which he replied “there are a number of dogmas about language” that are
“systematically refuted”, adding: such dogmas are “held by linguists too” which in his opinion
“probably false” and “undermined by current research.” As a contrarian Chomsky said that
there is a totally false dogmatic view: “language is primarily a means of communication, and
that it evolved as a means of communication.” Rather “it seems that language is evolved and is
designed as a mode of creating and interpreting thought.” In other words it’s a “system of
thought” which “can be used to communicate.” So “everything people do can be used to
communicate.” Such as, “you can communicate by your hairstyle, style of walk, everything.” It is
safe to say “language can be used to communicate, but it doesn’t seem to be part of its design.
Its design seems to be radically different, and in fact, even seems to undermine
communication.” If we pay attention to the “structure of language, you can find case after case,
right at the core of language design, where there are conflicts between what would be efficient
for communication, and what is efficient for the specific biological design of language. And in
every case that’s known, communicative efficiency is sacrificed. It just isn’t a consideration.”
Probably “that’s a conclusion that has very widespread significance.” But “in order to establish
it, you have to look at technical work.” Because “it’s not a kind of thing you can explain in two
minutes of exposition.” Though, “it’s not profound” or “quantum physics” that would take very
long time to demonstrate. Only “a half an hour would certainly suffice.”
“Another general belief about language, again, almost a dogma in all the relevant fields-
philosophy, linguistics, and so on—is that the minimal meaningful elements in language, sort of
word-like things, pick out entities in the extra-mental world. So the word, say, river picks out the
Charles River, and so on—something that a physicist could identify. That turns out to be true for
animal systems—animal communication systems. The symbols that appear—the actions that
are carried out—do apparently have one to one correlation with mind independent events. So
some particular call of a monkey will be related to leaves fluttering, predators coming, sort of—
I’m hungry, some hormonal change. It’s just not true of language. Linguistic elements do not
have that property. Actually, this was understood by Aristotle. It was understood in the 17 th and
18th centuries. Interesting work on it. The entities that we construct in our communiqués,
discourse, expression, interpretation—are partially mental object. There are ways in which they
are—modes in which we interpret phenomena. But they don’t pick out entities in the world that
a natural scientist could identify without looking into our minds. That tells us a lot about the
nature of language, and about our own nature. Language is the core human property. And this
was understood by Darwin, by a long tradition before him. And it’s very different from the way
it’s usually conceived.” It is worth nothing that Chomsky stressed that it’s a “minority view” and
“very few linguists would agree with this.” And gradually it will become clear.
Talks at Google. (2014, April 9). Understanding Linguistics | Noam Chomsky | Talks at Google [Video].
YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3PwG4UoJ0Y&ab_channel=TalksatGoogle
