Abstract
Many studies of primate vocalization have been undertaken to improve our understanding of the evolution of language. Perhaps, for this reason, investigators have focused on calls that were thought to carry symbolic information about the environment. Here I suggest that even if these calls were in fact symbolic, there were independent reasons to question this approach in the first place. I begin by asking what kind of communication system would satisfy a species’ biological needs. For example, where animals benefit from living in large groups, I ask how members would need to communicate to keep their groups from fragmenting. In this context, I discuss the role of social grooming and “close calls,” including lip-smacking and grunting. Parallels exist in human societies, where information is exchanged about all kinds of things, often less about the nominal topic than the communicants themselves. This sort of indexical (or personal) information is vital to group living, which presupposes the ability to tolerate, relate to, and interact constructively with other individuals. Making indexical communication the focus of comparative research encourages consideration of somatic and behavioral cues that facilitate relationships and social benefits, including cooperation and collaboration. There is ample room here for a different and potentially more fruitful approach to communication in humans and other primates, one that focuses on personal appraisals, based on cues originating with individuals, rather than signals excited by environmental events.
Highlights
Many studies of primate vocalization have been undertaken to improve our understanding of the evolution of language
Specialty section: This article was submitted to Evolutionary Psychology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology
In the 1970s, sociologists began to use terms like “Information Age” and “Information Society” in reference to times and places where mediated communication systems were facilitating the flow of messages between individuals
Summary
“We do not really know what a man is saying until we know who he is and to whom he is speaking.” F. Theories of human communication reflected the ideas of two signal engineers, Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver, who famously declared that if speakers tell listeners something they already know, no information passes between them (Shannon and Weaver, 1948). In this stripped-down view of communication, little thought was given to the possibility that speakers might communicate something besides the nominal topic, e.g., a willingness to share the material that they’re expressing; a presumption that the listener doesn’t know the thing that they’re saying; or a belief that the listener would find it interesting. First I will discuss something quite different, partly to make my point: the alarm calls of vervet monkeys
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