Creativity In Language

"an anonymous, collective and unconscious art; the result of the creativity of thousands of generations." - Edward Sapir

For me, the most fascinating part of the human language, something which makes it so unique and so powerful, is its room for creativity. It is not simply a means of communication as it is for animals; it is a tool with which we engage with the world around us. It is our way of describing and making sense of our surroundings, like no other species can. Literature, music, theatre - where would we be without language? Yes, it may have begun simply as a means by which our ancestors could communicate with each other better, a way of hunting or foraging more efficiently in times when survival was our only goal. But today, when it is no longer a case of every man for themselves, the human language has become something quite different.
Language is inextricably linked with our society, with our culture and with our traditions. It is fundamental to the entire experience of human life; it defines us. We can see it everywhere and there's no escaping it.
Literature is of course the most obvious example. Books, poetry, newspapers, magazines; today's society is controlled by words. Writers manipulate language, meticulously construct each and every sentence to conjure up in our minds a specific image or to draw from us a particular emotion. Similes, metaphors, irony; only because of our language's uniquely symbolic nature are these concepts even remotely possible. I think it's remarkable that simply shapes on a page are able to make us laugh or reduce us to tears, or produce the most detailed picture in our mind of a person or place we've never seen before. Language is, in itself, an art form.

Words are powerful. They can persuade, move, manipulate, shock. A carefully constructed advertising slogan, an intriguing newspaper headline or a well-chosen book title is able to grab our attention and perhaps even convince us to buy that product, that particular newspaper or that new novel.

This is again why language is something so personal. We can be creative with the language we use; tailor it to fit our own personality and use it in a way which represents our own unique thoughts and ideas. 

"Our language is the reflection of ourselves. A langauge is an exact reflection of the character and growth of its speakers." - Cesar Chavez

Language In Our Genes

“an essential component of the human mind, a crucial element of the human essence.” - Noam Chomsky on language.

Two amino acids. That's it? Just this one random mutation in our genetic make-up hundreds of thousands of years ago is what gave us the gift of speech, our most defining attribute, and perhaps the most integral part of human evolution. It set us apart from every other species on earth; it gave us art and music and literature, it made us human. For me, that's pretty huge to think about. 

It was in 2002 that a group of German researches discovered subtle differences in a protein known as FOXP2 between humans and chimps. All mammals have this protein, but in humans, two of its component amino acids are different (I'm not entirely sure what that means either). But this was the clue which helped scientists to see why humans are able to speak, but apes, genetically similar in so many other ways, are not.

 Ask any geneticist or linguist about the 'KE Family', and they'll tell you just how significant this London-born family were in fitting together the missing pieces of the human evolution jigsaw puzzle. In a nutshell, all of this family's members suffered from an inherited speech disorder, and here's where the link is: every single one of them possessed genetic mutations that affected the function of FOXP2. 

Now don't worry, I'll leave the protein and the DNA and the chromosome stuff up to those who know what they're talking about. What fascinates me isn't so much the statistics or the science, but rather how this science affects everything else. 

Language is in our genes.  And we can see evidence of this everyday. Where? Well one example is speech disorders; if a specific part of the human brain is damaged, or its development interrupted, language production and sometimes even understanding is affected. Where else? Babies. The human language, unlike any other skill which we acquire growing up, is instinctive; it is an innate ability, rather than something which is learned. A small child will pick up an average of 10 new words everyday without making any kind of conscious effort. Steven Pinker perfectly likened our ability to speak to a spider's ability to spin webs. We don't have to think about it, we just do it.

Maybe becuase it is so second nature to us, we tend to forget just what a miracle the human language is.