Language and Society
From what has been written so far it is clear that man is possessed of natural sociality. His disposition to band together with his fellows for lower or for higher purposes is one of his fundamental characteristics. To understand his fellows and to be understood by them, men were impelled to the production of language without which they could not communicate with each other.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
The desire of communication was the main cause of language making. Nowhere has the old proverb “Necessity is the mother of invention” received a better illustration than in the history of language; it was to satisfy the wants of daily life that the faculty of speech was first exercised. Charles Winick has defined language as “a system of arbitrary vocal symbols, used to express communicable thoughts and feelings and enabling the members of a social group or speech community to interact and to co-operate.” It is the medium of oral expression.
Language is a product not of one cause but of several factors. It is, in fact a social creation, a human invention an unconscious invention of a whole community. As Professor Whitney has observed, it is as much an institution as a body of unwritten laws, and like these it has been called forth by the needs of developing society.”
The linguists are not in a position to form any conjectures as to the precise point in the history of man at which the germs of speech should have appeared, and the time which they should have occupied in the successive steps of their development. That the process was a slow one, all agree.
To quote Whitney, “Language making is a mere incident of social life and of cultural growth. It is as great an error to hold that at some period men are engaged in making and laying up expressions for their own future use and that of their descendants, as that, at another period, succession shall find expression. Each period provides just what it has occasion for, nothing more. The production of language is a continuous process; it varies in rate and kind with the circumstances and habits of the speaking community, but it never ceases; there was never a time when it was more truly going than at present.”
Thus language is not the creation of one person or of one period but it is an institution, on which hundreds of generations and countless individual workers have worked.