LINGUISTICS 100

I never thought linguistics could be so interesting (despite the fact that I was struggling to stay awake for the last half-hour of class this morning).

The only class I am taking in the summer, titled “Communication and Language”, looks at the language around the world and how we use language to communicate. On the first day of classes, we were introduced to the course, and very briefly talked about symbolic thinking. On the powerpoint slide was a picture of a cave drawing of a horse.

Someone in the front row raised her hand and asked a question to which the professor replied, (I am paraphrasing here) “they would have had a language already in order for them to do a drawing of a horse”. At first I thought, okay… that makes sense… Then she quickly advanced to the next slide and started talking about something else. Wait a minute! Do you mean that we can’t draw unless we have a language? It was too late to ask the question in class. So I waited until the end of lecture and approached her.

“About symbolic thinking, you said the cave drawings were done because they already have a language?”

“Yes.”

“So then do you mean we can’t draw unless we have a language?”

“Yes, because for them to reproduce a drawing of a horse, they would have to see it and know what it is.”

“But can’t someone just see it and duplicate it without knowing fully what it is?” (like a photocopying machine?)

“No, you can’t reproduced something unless you know what it is. “

“Hmm… But say a child sees a chair. He then draws a chair in his book. He doesn’t necessarily have the understanding of what this ‘chair’ is or what it’s called.”

“But You can’t duplicate something without understanding the concept of it. And to grasp the concept of anything you would have to have a language already because in order to process anything in your brain you would need a language or a system of communication.”

“Right…. hmm… okay.” (I was thinking on the spot. I don’t think she understood my question.)

“You know, this is a very interesting topic. I read it in the papers or somewhere recently about drawing and language. Why don’t you write your question down here and I’ll get back to you about it.”

She then handed me a piece of paper and a pen. I paused at the blank piece of paper. I didn’t know how to phrase my question accurately. But she stood in front of me and stared. I quickly pieced together my thoughts and formed a somewhat intelligible sentence. I lifted my pen and read the question: “Can someone draw something without a language or an understanding of what it is that they are drawing? (ie Can’t they just see it for what it is and copy it?” Okay, I think that sounds about what I’m trying to get at. She grabbed the pen and paper from me and read the question.

“Okay, I will look into it.”

“Yeah, Thanks!” With that, I left unconvinced.

The 3rd week of school has now come to an end. I am still waiting to hear what she has to say about those cave drawings. And in the meantime, I am still learning lots about the languages that we use to communicate.