Language as a problem

Abstract

The term “language” is used for at least three distinct purposes. The first supports inquiry into coded message exchange. This has occupied most of the debate within the discipline of linguistics. Only here can we use notions of information and translation. The second use tries to speak to the profound change that happened to one species and that seems to be foundational in creating the human world, with all attendant problems. This is an entirely different sense, and it cannot be addressed with the technical terms developed in pursuit of the first sense. Finally, language has always played a central role in the definition of a people, however one might cash out that term. Like other globalising concepts such as “human,” “natural,” and “race,” the first sense of language-as-system carries with it a history of colonial appropriation and obliteration, of Christian universalization, and of a distinctly European ideology. The hegemony of English appears in this light to be a technological development rather than a linguistic fact, and a need arises to separate the valuable sense of a language as a defining characteristic of a people, from the technical sense of language as a mode of message exchange. Consequences for the boundaries and concerns of the discipline of linguistics are unavoidable.