Chapter Eleven THE LIFE AND GROWTH OF LANGUAGE DEFINITION OF LANGUAGE AND SPEECH

Chapter Eleven THE LIFE AND GROWTH OF LANGUAGE DEFINITION OF LANGUAGE AND SPEECH

  Wegener, like Whitney, uses the terms ‘life’ (cf. the title of Part I of his book: ‘On the life of language’; English transl. ‘On the life of speech’) and ‘growth’ (US: 3121) of language. However, in Wegener’s work these terms have lost their controversial character that so annoyed Whitney, they have also shed all ties with any speculations about the origin of language. After having introduced the term of Sprachleben, Wegener immediately goes on to qualify it and free it from all metaphorical ambiguities. He advises linguists to use this term carefully, and to keep constantly in mind that ‘language’ is only a collective name, an abstraction, standing for certain muscular movements with which a large number of people belonging to a social group associate a certain meaning or representation. In his 1921 article he differentiates more clearly between language and speech:

  When we talk about the activity of speaking [my emphasis], we mean by it first and foremost the articulated sound production of a single individual and we consider the speaker as opposed to the hearer or as an isolated individual. But if we talk about the language [my emphasis] we mean by it the articulated sound-production which is produced in a similar way, or at least with essentially the same acoustic effect, by all individuals capable of speech and members of a bigger community, and which is understood by all speaking members as the meaningful expression of psychical processes.

  (WS: 1)

  This definition anticipates almost exactly Saussure’s definition of langue as collective and passive, and parole as individual and active. The only difference is that Wegener regards language as active (better, dynamic) as well. He never uses the metaphor of language as a ‘storehouse’ for example. ‘Language’ is, as we have already said, clearly perceived as an abstraction, embracing the social interactions of speaker and hearer. Just like Saussure, he had some difficulty with the definition of the sentence, which was for him, as for Saussure, an element of speech, not language. It is a functional, not a structural unit. According to this conception the one-word sentence is a sentence, its function is that of a sentence. It is not a mere quasi-sentence. (We shall come back to this problem.)

  Language in general, or speech in particular, is an action and as such part and parcel of the psychological and physiological life of man, entertaining a close connection with

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  all the rest of the human organism (cf. US: 3121). This definition of language as a phenomenon of the mind and the body, incorporated into the global structure and actions of the human organism is something Whitney always defended, especially against Müller and Steinthal. As Leskien wrote in his obituary of Whitney: ‘Among all others Whitney has taught most energetically that language is not an independent, autonomous organism, but that it can only be understood as an integral, undetachable part of the life-expressions of human beings’ (Leskien 1897:94; cf. Wegener US: 3121). However, to say that language is a psycho-physiological phenomenon is not enough. The proper definition of language is, again in accordance with Whitney, that of an instrument of communicative interaction, its goal being mutual influence, its nature intentionality and purposefulness, its setting dialogue (cf. WS: 1–3).

  To say that the nature of language is interaction also solves the problem of the origin of language, to which Wegener alludes very briefly; language originated in human interaction (cf. WS: 1). Although Wegener only touches on the phylogenesis of language, his treatment of the ontogenesis of language is all the more complete. The chapter on language-acquisition as that of the gradual learning of language in context and in interaction would have pleased Whitney.