Who speaks?
Who speaks?
The answer to this question
may appear obvious.
Man is clearly the only speaking animal
among the Earth's living creatures.
"Man alone among the animals has speech",
declares the philosopher, Aristotle,
in his work "Politics".
"Man is the only animal to possess logos,
i.e. speech,
i.e. the faculty of reason".
René Descartes, the father
of modern philosophy and of cogito:
"cogito ergo sum",
I think therefore I am,
deemed speech to be
the only certain sign of thought,
which was hidden or trapped
inside the body.
According to this philosophical tradition,
speech is the criterion that distinguishes
man from other animals.
Over and above the debate
on the innateness of language,
i.e. whether it is natural,
or acquired, i.e. cultural,
one thing is certain:
man did not start out possessing
the faculty of speech.
Language is not a gift from God.
"It was only after a long process
of anthropogenesis",
writes André Leroi-Gourhan,
in his work "Le Geste et la Parole",
"that Man acquired language,
and that speech emerged".
The first stage was man's transition
from quadrupedalism
to bipedalism.
By adopting an upright stance,
our distant homo-genus ancestors
could have their hands free
to fashion tools, for instance.
At the same time, the mouth,
shifted from being an organ
with primarily a grasping function,
i.e. used for gripping objects or things,
to an organ that could
be used for other functions,
i.e. speech & language,
thereby giving rise to
the emergence of language.
Language and tools
are therefore two sides of the same coin.
Tools and language enabled
man to separate from nature
and disassociate himself
from his environment,
thereby engendering a distanced
or mediated relationship
between man and the world.
Tools and language
are what separate us from
our environment on the one hand
and what link us together
on the other.
They are what enable us
to create and to act,
to transform and influence
our environment.
Some might argue that this was to have
both negative and positive consequences,
but the link between technology
and man's domination over nature
is a subject for another day.
Let us, rather, focus
on today's topic:
"Who speaks?"
At the end of this long
process of anthropogenesis,
which we just described,
man managed to get past
the 'wall of language',
to use an expression coined
by the theorist of evolution,
Charles Darwin.
But is the wall of language
such a sizable obstacle?
When it comes down to it,
what distinguishes human language
from the sounds & cries of animals.
In this respect, Aristotle
can help us again.
While acknowledging language
to be a unique characteristic of man,
in his work 'Politics', he makes
a very interesting
and pertinent distinction
between phônê (voice)
and logos (speech).
The 'voice' is found in other animals.
One might argue that this
is inferior to speech,
speech, which is rational,
reasoned and articulated,
but the voice is used to express feelings.
The voice possesses
a faculty of expression,
which is also found in human language,
for example, in the form of interjections.
Man can express his joy,
[HAHA]
or his sorrow,
[OHHH]
his pain,
[OW]
or his pleasure,
[MMM]
his disgust,
[BERK]
or his surprise.
[EH?]
The same applies to animals:
an owl hoots,
a cat meows,
a donkey brays,
a duck quacks.
Through these sounds,
animals are able to express feelings.
It is therefore not its capacity
to express emotions
that makes human language so unique.
So where then does its uniqueness lie?
Let's consider an alternative hypothesis.
What if the uniqueness of human language
lay in its ability
to inform, process
and exchange information?
Man is clearly a communicative animal.
We see this on a daily basis
through social networks, advertising
television and mobile phones.
But even here,
the primacy and supremacy
of human language is debatable.
Animals also exchange information:
they process information
related to their environment,
and share that information
with their own kind,
who are also capable of recognising
the information being shared
because they are genetically
programmed to do so.
We could even go one step further
and say that this capacity
to process information
isn't even specific or exclusive
to living organisms,
whether it be to man
or other animals, whatever
their species category,
since computers can also process,
exchange,
and store quantities of information
that would exceed human understanding
in a matter of milliseconds.
Binary encoding, which only uses
two digits, i.e. '0' and '1'
is a new form of writing,
albeit a simplified,
and dematerialized one.
It allows us to exchange
an unlimited flow of information.
Thus, on these two levels,
expression and information,
man's supremacy can be challenged
not only by other animals
but also by the computer.
What's more, animals and computers
could even assuredly argue
that they communicate more efficiently,
and more effectively than man.
Well, animals can process
and exchange information.
So be it!
Animals have the capacity
to produce or emit messages
that are unequivocal.
Animals "do what they say",
as Philippe Breton would say,
in his book "Manipulated Speech".
Man, on the other hand, is able to lie.
Man is able to manipulate facts,
and distort reality.
Animals use
what we could qualify
as a CLOSED form of talking.
Their message is unequivocal
it is unilateral,
unidimensional,
whereas we could say that man
uses an OPEN form of speech.
It is equivocal, ambiguous.
It is subject to interpretation.
Man possesses the capacity to lie,
and man is also prone to misapprehension
misunderstandings,
misinterpretations,
and can be influenced
by my own interpretations.
He can be a victim of language.
He is his own victim.
As a result, humans are forced,
obliged to make an effort
to understand one other,
in order to convince others.
It is this third strata of language
that is specifically human,
i.e. that of comprehension.
Humans seek to convince others
and to share a world
that they have in common,
and which is constructed
by their respective experiences.
This is what makes
human language so human,
- and therefore so fragile -
yet so creative.
Unlike other animals,
man is able to detach himself
from his environment
and from his surroundings,
that is, he possesses
the faculty of 'symbolization'.
Unlike other animals,
he does not merely emit signals.
He creates signs and symbols.
These signs are designed
to refer to something
that is either physically present
or physically absent,
and which can be mentally represented.
This may appear abstract, even abstruse.
So I suggest we perform
a little experiment:
close your eyes.
Are your eyes closed?
Now, think of,
mentally represent a table.
OK?
Open your eyes.
If what you imagined was this table,
then 'well done'!
But let's not stop there.
Let's continue our experiment:
close your eyes again.
Are your eyes closed?
After the table, I want you to think of...
...a painting.
Ready? Can you see a painting?
Now open your eyes
to discover…
…this painting.
If this is what you pictured in your head,
then once again 'well done'!
Let's make the experiment a little harder.
Close your eyes.
I would now like you
to mentally represent…
…freedom.
Open your eyes,
as you can see, there's nothing
else here but me,
you cannot see any freedom.
It's somewhat harder to mentally
represent freedom, isn't it?
You can imagine it in allegorical form,
for instance, you can
think of a painting,
like this painting by Eugene Delacroix,
"Liberty Leading the People"
or the Statue of Liberty,
It's more difficult than
mentally representing a table.
The concept of freedom is abstract.
Yet, with words like 'table' or 'freedom',
we still have to deal with
the arbitrariness of signs,
signs which you should
be able to recognise,
and which carry a specific meaning.
Let's be a little more mischievous
and throw our arbitrary
conventions into disarray.
Let's put ourselves
in the shoes of a child
who is questioning his parents:
"Mum, dad, why is a table
called a 'table'?
Why is a painting called a 'painting'?
Why is a table not called a 'painting'?
Or a painting not called 'freedom'?
Or freedom not called a 'table'?"
You can see how this child's
line of questioning
can bring into disarray something
we believed to be sound,
i.e. language.
This is precisely what happened
in the legend of Babel
when God decided to punish man
for his demiurgic aspirations
believing himself to be God's equal.
God put an end to the common language
spoken by humanity
by confusing the tongues of men
and scattering man all over
the surface of the Earth.
At this point,
man ceased to be in communion
with God and nature.
His own specific language
became a fact of culture,
which helps explain
the diversity, the hybridisation
and the evolution of languages,
and which also explains why languages
need to be taught and learnt.
I would not have been able to understand
the signs we mentioned previously:
'table', 'painting', 'freedom'
if I had not learnt, acquired
English in advance.
We can repeat the experience
we performed earlier,
this time adding a further
dimension: translation.
Instead of talking about a 'table',
we could talk about a 'tavolo'.
Instead of talking about a 'painting',
we could talk about a 'tableau'.
Instead of talking about 'freedom',
we could talk about 'Freiheit'.
If I didn't speak Italian,
French,
or German,
then the signs I just emitted
would be no more than
mere rumbling sounds,
mere gibberish that is indescribable,
indistinct and unintelligible.
In this episode,
we have explored three strata of language:
the faculty of expression,
the ability to process information,
and lastly, open speech,
i.e. the faculty of comprehension.
For those of you who
were paying attention,
we used certain terms
almost interchangeably
although they can have
very different meanings:
language,
a language or tongue,
and speech.
It is perhaps time to look
at these notions
and to define them
to make sure everything is clear.
Language is the house
of Being (Heidegger),
it is the human faculty of language.
It can be found in each one of us,
it is universal
whether you are able to speak
or are deaf-mute.
A language or tongue...
...is a whole system of fixed
words and symbols
within a given society,
and shared by the same speech community:
French,
Catalan,
Spanish,
Breton
and even sign language.
And now what about
the third concept: speech?
Speech, to some extent, is
the physical act of producing language.
When I speak, I form
the subject of language.
I express, arrange,
and combine words and signs
into a larger unit
of language, i.e. sentences.
Ali Benmakhlouf expresses this
rather nicely in his book
"La conversation comme manière de vivre",
where he defines speech
as the 'adventure of the sentence'.
Man uses speech and sentences
to build a bridge,
opening the way to others.
When I speak,
I open myself up, I reveal myself,
I lay myself open to others,
from whom I expect
and request a reaction.
Every time we speak, we look to others,
to their intelligence,
their sensitive intelligence.
We look to others, hoping that
our action will be reciprocated.
We believe that others are
capable of giving us
what we expect to receive in return.
When I speak, I take the risk...
...of being heard.
SPEAKING MEANS TAKING THE RISK OF BEING HEARD
