In many ways, linguistic standards are very empowering. People can use a shared set of rules and conventions that they can use to communicate effectively with others. This can be especially important in formal settings, such as in education or the workplace, where clear and precise communication is essential for success. As thoroughly explained in my evolution of language paper, linguistics and its thriving was necessary for the formation of a species with our intelligence. It is therefore true that linguistics can be empowering. But on the other side of the coins lives the darker aspect of linguistics. Just as language created a hierarchy between us and the other animals, another hierarchy between humans is also commonly formed. Those who are able to conform to the standard may be seen as more intelligent, competent, or worthy of respect than those who cannot.
As shown below, figure 1 and figure 2 both show the night sky. They were drawn within 10 years of each other. While they both represent the night sky, Figure 1 represents Paris as the beautiful architectural center of Europe. The dark sky exemplifies the beauty.
However, figure 2 emphasizes on the night sky and what it truy feels like. That feeling is powerful enough to overshadow those buildings in figure 2. These figures are both night sky paintings but they relay different thoughts and feelings. This expression of creativity similarly occurs in written language. There is, for example, the comparison between Bonnie Urciuoli’s “The Political Topography of Spanish and English” with Langston Hugh’s poem. Both have an essence of language politics but the poem is usually more pathos-oriented. So the “type” of writing has much to do with how the argument will be presented. After the reader understands the “type” of reading they are absorbing, it is also important to present your conclusions to a group of people who read the same thing. Confirmation bias could play a large role with how or what information to absorb. When writing, begin by previewing the text to get an idea of what it’s about and what you should focus on. The research phase is the most essential step towards writing any type of argument. Even in my “Assignment 2 Part 2” poem, which was a purely pathos argument, I researched the poetic tricks used to encapsulate certain ideas. On my research paper on language origin, not only did I familiarize myself with the subject. I understood the debates and advancements of the field. I learned how our understanding of language evolution evolved aver time.After the subject is well understood, focus on target audience. As mentioned with reading, allow a group of people to see your writing to remove any bias.
A common rhetorical strategy. Is the usage of emotion to convey a point.when could also use researched empirical data to deduce an argument. These are common strategies especially used in rhetoric. While research is a powerful tool for rhetoric, it’s a tool of which many fakes exist. A researched article must go through a fleet of peer reviews to become “peer reviewed.” Also there are certain writing schemes specifically used in researched papers. By checking for a peer review for a paper and things such as an abstract, footnotes, endnotes, and references, you can be more assured that the information you are using is more credible. In Urciuoli’s research paper, the following reference was made: “that is now said in Spanish is functionally different because the organization of the speech event (Hymes 1974) vis-a-vis the speakers’ roles has changed.” The article by “Hyme” is another peer reviewed scholarly article. This information alone put a heavier weight towards the acceptance of the produced ideas by Urciuoli. However in Hugh’s poem, more emotional, but less empirical arguments dominated. For example: “But I guess I’m what I feel and see and hear.” Asking who oneself is is a very deep questions. While it would be illogical to base an argument on a still-debated subject of philosophy, there was an emotional impact that allowed Hugh’s statement to convey a powerful point. One could say that Baldwin’s “If Black English Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is” had the bias of Baldwin being black. But this was published in the New York times. The publisher peer reviewed the publication. This solidifies the disappearance of most bias concerns. The source of a piece of writing and the peer review process can prevent any useless comments from being made.
I also learned the value of writing down what the structure of the essay will look like. Not only does this ensure a smooth transition from point to point, it also prevents the distracting tangents. It is really easy to forget the essays objective when a certain part interests you. Another essential beginning step is to identify your own bias. For example in my first assignment, I wrote about my personal history with language. I was frustrated at the past and that was a bias. It led to my writing “I wasn’t respected” without any elaboration. In moments of frustration or excitement, there is a natural tendency to assume your emotions are shared by your readers. That is the danger of bias and the purpose for the necessity of identifying it.
Most importantly, I learned the reasons to use an active versus passive voice. It was gap that used to be much more common in my writing. I have even implemented the usage of an active voice in my day to day conversations. It’s been a journey and many lessons were learned (oh sorry: I learned many lessons)!
Digital Portfolio
Language and Literacy Narrative:
As a six-year-old, I was unable to speak any language. I could merely combine sounds and noises to express the simplest of ideas in the most complicated ways. For that, I was perceived as stupid. 13 of my 24 uncles and aunts thought it would take nothing less than divinity to fix me. The others suggested I immediately get taken to a psychiatric therapist. My late grandmother was the only one who defended me. She understood the sinister piffle I was being treated to. Due to my “abnormality,” when playing with my cousins in a card game, for example, I would continuously observe this tsunami of pity directed my way. When I would lose, they would suggest I get another shot at it. When I would win, the celebrations got a tad bit too loud.
What I describe is an occasion of occasions. The repetitive nature of my interactions was empirical evidence that speaking late had changed my social status. When I would beat my cousin in a game of chess, it was either perceived as luck or as a weakness of that cousin. That is how my family saw it. When I lost a game with a more competitive cousin, everything made sense again. The world was only in order whenever I made a mistake. But on occasion, however common, if I do something right, the world has lost all sense and now floats in chaos. This was not fueled by my losing of games (because it wasn’t below average). The only “special” thing about me was my inability to communicate the same way others communicated. If I did so with a stutter after half a decade of learning, My social position was diminished.
My intellect was simplified to my ability to absorb and create speech. If I didn’t talk the “right way,” I probably never had something interesting to say in the first place. I probably had too interesting chess moves to play. If I happened to play a good chess move, I was lucky or my opponent was dumb. My brain is as able as I am able to speak.
While speaking was a struggle, geometry and pictures were most certainly not. If I had an idea, I could fathom it through geometry. Like in my chess game, I could not tell you that I am doing a London Opening. But I could picture a triangle centered at my queen with two nights whose forward “L” movement protects my important pawns. That was not a mistake. I intended to do the London Opening. I did not know that it was called the London Opening! But because I did not know it by name, my use of it was simply luck. People’s minds are too simple to generalize language beyond a list of syntax that grades your knowledge. Language is the expression of ideas and not a system to evaluate how good the idea is.
It can always be seen that the expression of simple ideas through beautiful uses of language does not make the idea beautiful or anything more than simple. The expression of a complex thought process through a “broken language” doesn’t take away from the possibility of the idea being intended and with merit.
Rhetorical Analysis Assignment:
Language paves through snow, life’s true trail groomer!
Ask the president or a known actor!
Speak right and write rightly, or go suffer!
Life will be harder, rougher, and smaller!
One could achieve. I am certain one could!
But politics asks whether someone should!
Life insured that life ain’t good in the hood
If you speak wrong, life yells “MISUNDERSTOOD!”
That is the excuse. Ask the president!
Obama did not speak Baldwin’s black English!
By speaking white right, he slipped through the vent!
“Life is fair.” Hell No! It’s more like fair-ish!
I don’t know what to say, but I know how to feel!
I hope I can be taken seriously. Without rhymes and without syllable tracking!
I hope I can be taken seriously because of my brain in spite of my accent!
I hope my dream and accent thrive independently!
I hope I get my way paved! I hope I get a damn chance!
I hope my accent doesn’t make my words jokes at first glance!
I hope I can dream and I dream I can hope!
I hope and I hope! Will life change or give me enough rope?
Researched Essay:
Language origin and the origin of complex life sparked similar kinds of debate. In the latter case, Lord Kelvin’s disagreements with Charles Darwin quickly diminished with the rising geology field. At that time, Darwin also explained the origin of language, which most of his contemporaries accepted. His main opposers took the approach of crediting intelligent design as the cause of language. This opposition will not be discussed in this paper as it has diminished in popularity and is not much of a debating issue in the 21st century.
From the 1970s up to the beginning of the 21st century, the most common theories of language origin amounted to four possible explanations, which can be broken up into two sections: language is innate and language is learned. I will begin by explaining the theory holding that language is innate, showing two possible approaches: the continuity approach and the discontinuity approach. Steven¹ Pinker, a Cognitive Psychologist, has championed the former, while Noam Chomsky, Linguist and Cognitive Scientist, has developed the latter. The disagreements emanate from different definitions of the concept of innate. This difference in definitions will be discussed and accounted for in this paper.
¹ Steven Pinker and Noam Chomsky are both influential figures in the field of linguistics, and they have both put forward theories on the origin of language. Pinker’s approach, known as the Innate Continuity hypothesis, suggests that language evolved gradually from the vocalizations and gestures of early hominids. In contrast, Chomsky’s Innate Discontinuity hypothesis argues that the ability to produce and understand language is innate and unique to humans and that it cannot be explained by the gradual evolution of other cognitive abilities. These two theories represent different perspectives on the question of how language originated, with Pinker’s approach emphasizing the continuity of language with other forms of communication and cognition, and Chomsky’s approach emphasizing the discontinuity of language as a uniquely human ability.
In many cases, innate is the minimal conception of innateness. That is, innate means not learned. Brendan Ritchie’s “What’s wrong with the minimal conception of innateness in cognitive science,” explains in detail why innate relates to the “intuitive” development of skill. Hussar, Chomsky, Fitch, Pinker, and Jackendoff agree that Language is innate. Yet they do not dispute the fact that we, humans, learn languages. We learn to speak and write. When we argue that language is innate, what is meant is that language would not have developed if it were not for some level of intuition. As shown in table 3.1², the learned argument is divided into “Behaviorism” and “Culturism.” While we may agree that there is a learned component of language, the two learned arguments are usually anti-Darwinian. In Darwin’s “The descent of man, and selection in relation to sex,” he brings up Hermann von Helmholtz’s point that certain harmonies (whether it be sound or sight) are highly agreeable. It is innately the case that our evolution allows us to recognize patterns in nature. In this case, we are not limited to describing humans.
This applies to a wide variety of animals. Given that both the human species and many other animals recognize patterns and use such to communicate, it is empirically very likely that language and pattern recognition have a son-and-mother-like relationship.
Below is Fig. 1³ from Jackendoff and Pinker’s “The nature of the language faculty and its implications for the evolution of language (Reply to Fitch, Hauser, and Chomsky).” A group of two is grouped into eight pairs. These eight pars are paired and then grouped into a four-element array. It is then once again grouped into a four-element array. Wang Shugen’s “Framework of pattern recognition model based on cognitive psychology” dives into the understanding and usage of human pattern recognition to build other “visual cognitive mechanisms.” Our innate ability to recognize patterns has reached a very indisputable phase. Recursion is the sequential use of certain linguistic elements to form a structure.
When repeated, grammatical structures arise. PJ said that Chomsky named the idea of grouping to
² This table was produced and presented in Ulbaek’s paper.
³ This table was produced and presented in the JP paper.
make a larger and larger picture (a word to a phrase to a sentence and so on) the “domain of ‘discrete infinity’ in visual perception, with the hierarchical structure of unlimited depth.” Our
evolutionary innate ability to recognize patterns, coupled with language being a pattern, allows us to deduce the following: Human language origin has an innate necessity that is much better explained in a Darwinian structure.
It is, therefore, the case that “Behaviorism” and “Culture” are explanations that are false and do not conform to modern-day evidence.
Ib Ulbaek’s article “The origin of language and cognition” begins by discussing the definition of Continuity and its “counterpart.”Continuity is much more of a Darwinian approach to explaining the origin of language. The case is made that a huge pattern construct (such as, in this case, language) cannot be born out of nothing. It cannot be “De Novo.” Chomsky sees discontinuity in attempting to explain language origin from a Darwinian perspective. Below is figure 3.1⁴, a differentiation between how Intelligence vs Communication grows in humans.⁵ While there is a clear evolutionary reason for
⁴ This table was produced and presented in Ulbaek’s paper.
communication⁶, it is not quite clear with Intelligence. Ulbaek explains what’s called the “Prisoner’s Dilemma.” Co-operating is more efficient than solo working in society. “But working together and cheating the others out of their fair share is even better — except for those who are cheated. For them, once bitten, twice shy — which argues against doing co-operative work after all.” This also provides an explanation as to why language is not as common across different species.
But unlike Ulbaek, Trivers argues in his 1971 paper, reciprocal altruism allows cooperation and cheating to work together. This is done by trusting “friends” and having more intelligent navigation of communication. Ulbaek uses this to conclude that “language is cognitive whereas animal communication is not.” This can explain why language originated with humans.
Chomsky’s definitions of patterns and their relation to language fail to separate or explain why language only really originated with humans. A deaf kid will form a kind of sign language without any auditory connections. Our intelligence and our innate ability to perceive and form language are somewhat unique to us. But realizing an evolutionary explanation and continuity approach to language origin only makes sense once Intelligence is separated from Communication. They have different evolutionary, origins. Pinker also makes the argument that Chomsky fails to account for the “reverse-engineering” of evolutionary processes. He gives the example that the eye is still useful without the muscles surrounding it. But those muscles without the eyes are useless. This can tell us (or hint towards) which came first through natural selection. Chomsky never approached that side of a Darwinian explanation. There are ironically bigger gaps in a discontinuity approach (it is ironic because this approach assumes big gaps between evolution and language origins).
To conclude, there are still many gaps in our understanding of Language origin. It is however significantly more plausible that language origin is innate due to pattern recognition being innate and language depending on pattern recognition. And the continuity approach most correctly describes the evolutionary process before attempting to use it to explain language origin. Continuity and Discontinuity both have Darwinian evolution as a premise. But continuity is a stronger foundation and a better representation of what Darwinian evolution is.
References
- Ritchie. (2021). What’s wrong with the minimal conception of innateness in cognitive science? Synthese (Dordrecht), 199(Suppl 1), 159–176. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-020-02543-0
- Ulbæk, I. (1998). The origin of language and cognition. In Approaches to the evolution of language : social and cognitive bases (pp. 30-43). Cambridge University Press.
- Haotang Li, Shengtao Guo, Kailin Lyu, Xiao Yang, Tianchen Chen, Jianqing Zhu, Huanqiang Zeng. (2022) A Challenging Benchmark of Anime Style Recognition. 2022 IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Workshops (CVPRW), pages 4720-4729
- Jackendoff, & Pinker, S. (2005). The nature of the language faculty and its implications for evolution of language (Reply to Fitch, Hauser, and Chomsky). Cognition, 97(2), 211–225. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2005.04.006
- Askedal, Roberts, I., & Matsushita, T. (2010). Noam Chomsky and Language Descriptions. In Noam Chomsky and Language Descriptions. John Benjamins Publishing Company.
- Darwin, C., Kebler, L. & Joseph Meredith Toner Collection. (1871) The Descent of Man,: And Selection in Relation to Sex. London: J. Murray. [Pdf] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/04033382/
Footnotes:
⁵ Communication and intelligence are two distinct abilities that are important for the development of language in humans. Communication refers to the ability to convey information and ideas through verbal and nonverbal means, such as speech, gestures, and body language. Intelligence, on the other hand, is the ability to process and understand information, solve problems, and think abstractly.
The difference between communication and intelligence is significant for the origin of language in humans because language is a complex system of communication that requires both abilities. Without the ability to communicate, humans would not be able to express their thoughts and ideas to others. And without intelligence, humans would not be able to comprehend and understand the language being used by others.
Therefore, the combination of both communication and intelligence played a crucial role in the evolution of language in humans. It allowed humans to develop complex systems of communication, enabling them to share information, express their thoughts and ideas, and build relationships with others. This, in turn, allowed for the development of complex societies and cultures, as well as the advancement of human knowledge and technology.
⁶ Language and communication are closely connected, as language is a primary means of communication. It is a system of symbols, signs, and sounds that are used to represent ideas, thoughts, and feelings, and to convey information from one person to another.
