Linguistics is, in many ways, an indistinct field of inquiry, ungoverned by quantitative milestones or exactitudes. The fact that Steven Pinker and Guy Deutscher have approached the subject from different viewpoints should not be seen as oppositional, but rather as complementary perspectives which reflect the diversity of the subject. In Language Instinct, Steven Pinker examines language from the standpoint of instinct, as an intrinsic quality of the human condition with which everyone is equipped from birth. Deutscher, on the other hand, sees linguistics through the prism of culture, as a malleable cognitive function that is different based on individual cultural orientations. In Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages, Deutscher proposes the interesting notion that there is a symbiotic relationship between culture and language, each affecting the other. The themes put forth by Pinker and Deutscher may resemble a classic “nature-versus-nurture” dichotomy, but should rather be seen as dynamic parts of a diverse whole.
Deutscher uses a multitude of interesting examples to show that language is not necessarily hard-wired into the human cognitive framework, but is influenced by socio-cultural concepts that determine how people in different cultures think of, and refer to, objects, actions and abstract concepts. Deutscher’s “canvass” is the world, and his treatment of wide cultural
variations in concepts and expressions is irresistible. Deutscher considers age-old debates over the influence of environmental factors and cultural character on the development of language. “A nation’s language, so we are often told, reflects its culture, psyche, and modes of thought. Peoples in tropical climes are so laid-back it’s no wonder they let most of their consonants fall by the wayside” (Deutscher 1). Germans are thought to be “orderly,” Deutscher points out, which some have considered to be part and parcel of their meticulously inclusive language, which appears to omit no thought or concept, no matter how trivial.
As such, it would seem that language is a compartmentalized phenomenon, pre-determined by the social parameters in which it exists. However, though cultural influences do factor in, no individual language is so limited. “No language – not even that of the most ‘primitive’ tribes – is inherently unsuitable for expressing the most complex ideas. Any shortcomings in a language’s ability to philosophize simply boil down to the lack of some specialized abstract vocabulary and perhaps a few syntactic constructions, but these can easily be borrowed” (Deutscher 2). Thus, any language is capable of ranging, intellectually, far beyond the confines of its particular cultural experience and physical boundaries. As Deutcher puts it, it is possible to discuss the relative qualities of empiricism and rationalism in a Zulu dialect, “or to hold forth about existentialist phenomenology in West Greenlandic” (Deutscher 2).
Deutscher notes that some of history’s greatest philosophers and historians have argued that languages specifically mirror the characteristics of their cultural environment. Francis
Bacon made reference to the fact that the prevailing manners and attitudes of a nation are to be found in the particularities of its language. Gottfried Herder and Ralph Waldo Emerson, among others, have also speculated along these lines. Deutscher argues that these arguments, as convincing as they may seem, begin to dissolve when one breaks these generalities down to the “qualitiesof particular nations” (Deutscher 3).
Different languages select different names for an infinite array of concepts, labels which, Deutscher, points out, are nothing more than cultural conventions. “Apart from some marginal cases of onomatopoeia, such as the cuckoo bird, where the label does try to reflect the nature of the bird it denotes, the vast majority of labels are arbitrary” (Deutscher 10). The objects that are behind these appointed labels are naturally occurring and are subject to the meaning that language places upon them. Deutscher cites the English word “mind” as an example, a word that has no counterpart in either French or German. A search for “mind” in a French dictionary would produce the following list:
“esprit (peace of mind = tranquillite d’esprit)”
“tete (it’s all in the mind = c’est tous dans la tete)”
“avis (to my mind = a mon avis)”
“raison (his mind is going = il n’a plus toute sa raison)”
“intelligence (with the mind of a two year old = avec l’intelligence d’un enfant de deux ans)” (Deutscher 14).
Conversely, there is no equivalent in English for the French word “esprit,” which means that such concepts cannot be considered natural, in the sense that words like “dog” or “cat” are natural. Otherwise, “mind” would have the same meaning in every language, Deutscher points
out. The concept of color offers a case in point. Deutscher writes that the British politician William Gladstone wrote, in a three-volume work in 1849 that because the Greek language, as used in the Iliad and Odyssey, offered a limited color palette the conception of color had not yet evolved. Deutscher wonders if, because a culture has no word for a specific culture, they do not see that color. Since color blindness, as a condition, is known to be an uncommon phenomenon and is fairly evenly distributed wherever it is present. This, then, raises the question of whether there is something about a particular culture, such as the ancient Greeks, that determined the way that people perceived color. Could it be a specific environmental factor, which dictated the ways in which ancient languages reflected their surroundings?
When Homer described the sea as being “wine-dark,” was this a reference to the way that he actually saw the water, or was it a cultural reference stemming from the prevalence of wine in ancient Greek culture? Deutscher makes a slight correction to the traditional translation of this description, noting that Homer actually said oinops, which literally means “wine-looking” (Deutscher 31). Deutscher argues that what we may actually be seeing in Gladstone’s critique is a fundamental cultural variance in the way words are perceived. In other words, Gladstone’s literal interpretation of Homer’s use of color failed to account for the fact that the poet sought to communicate on a poetic level rather than on a literal one. For instance, Homer also refers to oxen as “wine-looking,” when it is literally understood that oxen are black, or brown, thus a cultural/environmental-specific allusion. Thus, Gladstone’s assertion that the limited array of color references in Homer points to an undeveloped expression of color among the ancient Greeks points to a cultural divide that governed the way in which Gladstone, writing in 19th-
century England, could not account for a culturally determined meaning that was thousands of years old.
For Steven Pinker, instinct is the primary concern in the study of language. In The Language Instinct, Pinker addresses the theory that language isn’t developed until a child enters school, or that it is the result of imitation. Pinker takes the position that the remarkable ability of young children to learn language proves that “infants come equipped with these skills; they do not learn them by listening to their parent’s speech” (Pinker 267). Research has shown that children as young as two develop the ability to use fluent grammar in conversation, which has confounded linguistic researchers for years. As such, Pinker contends that the “basic organization of grammar is wired into a child’s brain” (Pinker 281). His theoretical position accords with the idea of Universal Grammar. Developed by Noam Chomsky, this concept argues that all languages have grammatical commonalities, which accounts for the universality of the language instinct.
Pinker writes that “there seems to be a common plan of syntactic, morphological and phonological rules and principles, with a small set of varying parameters” (240). Thus, in spite of what may seem like substantial formative differences, languages actually have many elements in common. Pinker’s aim is to show that the concept of language is the product of a common human faculty, one that makes possible the ability to establish unique modes of verbal communication. According to Pinker, language is a high-functioning cognitive mechanism that humans have evolved over history as a means of understanding and giving order to the world around them.
Universality is Pinker’s starting point, the backdrop for the language faculty. The differences in human language, which certainly sound profound, are actually quite superficial. “Though languages are mutually unintelligible, beneath this superficial variation lies the single computational design of Universal Grammar, with its nouns and verbs, phrase structures and word structures, cases and auxiliaries, and so on” (Pinker 427). Languages make possible an infinite combination of words, word-forms and phrases, yet these are actually the product of an over-arching similarity. “Languages all show a duality of patterning in which one rule system is used to order phonemes within morphemes, independent of meaning, and another is used to order morphemes within words and phrases, specifying their meaning” (Pinker 238). Pinker contends that all languages also share vocabularies that number in the tens of thousands, arranged along a scaffolding of verbs, nouns and a few other parts of speech.
Pinker uses animal physiology to make an analogy of structure. Universal grammar is like an “archetypal body plan,” which animals across a broad spectrum of phylum all share (239). Just as languages share grammatical characteristics, amphibians, reptiles and mammals all exhibit basic skeletal similarities, even though one type of animal flies, another swims, another produces milk for its young, etc. As such, all languages exhibit the same kind of basic design characteristics. Pinker points out that researchers have known for decades that a “common grammatical codeallows speakers to produce any linguistic message they can understand, and vice versa” (Pinker 237). This is why if there is a common blueprint just below the world’s languages, then any fundamental property of one language would be present in another (Pinker 239).
One of the most important points made in The Language Instinct is the difference between thought and language or, more specifically, between thought and words. Pinker uses an example taken from George Orwell’s 1984, in which specific mediums of expression are used in order to control thought and the expression of thoughts that could be considered subversive. Pinker argues that, due to the separation between thought and words, an invention like “Newspeak” would prove useless because “concepts of freedom and equality will be thinkable even if they are nameless” (Pinker 73). “Thinkable” is the operative word in this example. The generation of concepts within the brain takes place independent of the language that gives them shape. Pinker resolves this concept by explaining that language is needed to express thoughts, to share them and, thereby, generating further thoughts through the sharing of ideas.
Pinker makes reference to a “language of thought,” which, though unspoken provides an instinctive shaping of thoughts within the cognitive process. In fact, it may be this cognitive shaping that provides the mental framework allowing humans of all cultures to form language. When children become old enough to think in concepts, they begin to develop the ability to form rudimentary, disconnected words. A child may hear his parents referring to the family pet as the “cat,” which eventually allows the child to associate the concept that goes along with this word to the animal in question. From there to the formation of simple words, like “cat” and “dog,” is a logical next step. Those that have hypothesized a commonality between thought and language labored under a misconception concerning the nature of the relationship between thought and the way in which thought is conveyed.
Conclusion –
Deutscher and Pinker, though not diametrically opposed, approach the subject of language from two different perspectives which could be characterized, albeit loosely, as form versus function. Deutscher is concerned with the impact of cultural experience (or cultural indoctrination) on language, whereas Pinker’s orientation is universal and fundamental, describing the commonality of grammatical forms that cross all cultures. There is a degree of symbiosis between their arguments concerning the formational rudiments of all languages, but whereas Pinker regards variations in phonology and vocabulary as essentially superficial, Deutscher emphasizes the impact of environmental, historical and traditional influences on the ways in which different cultures conceive of objects and concepts. Deutscher cites the example of the aboriginal language known as Guugu Yimithirr, which is entirely geographical in its references to objects. For example, a speaker would refer to the location of a common object being on the western side, or in the northeastern corner of a house, rather than indicating left or right. One may argue that Pinker, by virtue of his position, comes down on the side of nature in the nature vs. nurture debate. For Deutscher, on the other hand, “the reality is that nature and nurture shape language” (Kirkus 2010). There is enough evidence to indicate that both authors’ viewpoints have merit.
Works Cited
Deutscher, Guy. Through the Language Glass: Why the Word Look Different in Other
Languages. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2010.
Pinker, Steven. The Language Instinct. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2007.
“Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages.” Review.
Kirkus Reviews, 2010. http://www.kirkusreviews.com.
