Dr. Doolittle...

I am writing this in the hope that it will keep me from experiencing such intense fury during every class discussion. Perhaps it isn’t a bad thing that I get so worked up about language and its meaning, but the frustration I feel is keeping me from moving forward in trying to understand more about what we are studying.
I admit that I’m at fault, in at least one instance, but the conversation keeps heading this direction and I feel like it has to be addressed. I can’t contain my thoughts on this issue any further. We cannot prove that animals have language, and attempts to prove such by any logical argument will be futile.
I’m sure I’m pissing off a myriad of people. That’s okay. I will accept my role as pariah. This is something that people obviously feel passionately about from many perspectives, but for the sake of my sanity, I must say something about it.
I said in class on Friday that when humans say “ow!” in instances of pain it is no different than a dog whimpering when it is hurting. This was in no way intended to show that animals have language, but rather that our utterances in pain are primal in nature and can thus be void of content and convention. Our understanding of them as anything more, as a mode of communication for instance, is an assertion of our captivity in language and society. The fact that we view an animal’s vocal responses to painful stimuli as a type of language is too an instance of us placing the rules of our language games onto a situation where they are unnecessary. Basically, the noises made by any animal (human or otherwise) are not language or communication until we assign meaning to them, which we are prone to do, given language’s governance over the human experience as we know it.
Human beings are fascinating in the sense that we are wholly dependent on one another for our existence. The length of time that the human infant is reliant on another for its well-being seems to be exceedingly long (wherein we are not only reliant on another source for food, but also for mobility). I would argue that in this critical period we become so entrenched in language that there is no way for us to ever escape it. I say this because the moment we exit the womb we are bombarded with stimuli imbued with meaning, and we slowly learn how to respond in ways that others understand. We cannot help but learn how to speak the language in at least some way, to ease our own burdens as well as those of others. The minute a baby can learn to sign or say milk there is much less room for pangs of hunger that would result in a visceral, primal cry. I can concede the point that humans and other animals alike emit sounds in times of pain, or even pleasure; however, in humans those sounds are quickly responded to by another’s care at infancy so we quickly learn that we can make sounds to indicate need/desire. It is in humans and domestic animals that we see a quick response to noises that could be nothing more than a reflex in the nervous system. It can certainly be the case that an animal could make sounds in response to stimuli with never an answer.
It’s not that I don’t want to see animals communicating with humans or one another, I’m the first to talk to my dogs, or a horse I see; I imagine that they are communicating with me, too. However, I recognize this as an indulgence I allow myself in taking the rules and cues that govern language, perception and understanding and applying them to the world around me. I yearn to anthropomorphize the things I come in contact with, and I think we all do. By what other means are we to understand other creatures that seem so like us?
I know the response. Well, what about the way my dog gets excited whenever I say “walk” or “treat”? Why then does my horse come to me when I call its name? Why can a monkey learn sign language? To me, the response is fairly clear. It would be foolish for me to argue that an animal is unable to learn to respond to stimuli in a very specific way. For the same reasons that birds fly away when a predator pounces at them or animals seek shelter during thunderstorms, our animals learn that doing certain actions in the presence of certain beings increases the probability of food. Complex stimuli yielding complex responses does not language make, as there are physical, biological and chemical responses, even at the atomic level, that will respond in complex ways to complex stimuli.
We must recognize that as humans, bound in language, we are always going to describe and understand things by way of language. There is not a way for us to express the world around us, especially the actions of creatures that seem so like us, without using language at least as a referent, beyond its role as the means by which we make our stamp upon the world.
I say all of this not because I want people to stop conversing with their puppies or houseplants even. By all means, continue this if it provides you with a pleasing psychological effect, I know it does me. But let us not be so egotistical, so anthropocentric to think that because we as humans function in such a way, so too must the rest of the world mirror our motives and actions. Rather, let us move from the question of whether or not animals can and do talk to each other and us, and instead focus on the effect language has and can have on other humans and the world itself as its consequences far outweigh the importance of its origin.