Language
"Language is the institution whereby humans communicate and interact with each other by means of habitually-used oral-auditory arbitrary symbols."
R. A. Hall. 1968. An Essay on Language. New York.
This definition implies the following premises:
- Language is confined to humans.
- Animals certainly communicate with one another. However, all animal communication systems lack the ability to communicate about anything beyond the here and now, and they do not allow novel messages to be produced and understood. Therefore, humans may be described as the only talking animals.
- Language is habitually used.
- People use language everywhere every day, usually with little cognitive effort. Words and sentences seem to flow out of the mouth in a subconscious, almost automatic way. Or do you normally think about each word before uttering it??
- Language makes use of arbitrary symbols.
- There is no obvious relationship between the linguistic sign, i.e. the word or its sound shape, and the object in the real world. Therefore, the meaning of the sign has to be learned.
- Language is used oral-auditorily.
- The oral-auditory channel, i.e. communication via mouth and ear, is the most important mode of human communication. It is referred to as speech.
However, if we include general phenomena of communication, this view may be too restrictive.