Saturday, November 22, 2008

Human language

What makes us human is language. "Humanity arises in the social dynamics in which language takes place". This is difficult to prove, but Maturana cites examples of feral children brought up by wolves so that what we find are wolves with the genetics of Homo sapiens. They never learn to speak (although they may know a few words). It is important to note that no particular behavior or movement or gesture or sound constitutes language. Rather, it is an ongoing process because it is defined in the history of the coordination of actions. Just a word or gesture does not constitute language. Furthermore, language is not an abstract phenomenon; we are not dealing with abstract entities.

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