| Contents > Mis-Perception: Metaphor as a metaphor for the reception of fictional narratives by Russ Swinnerton |
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Symbolic representation and the origins of language
One of our commonalities is the use of symbols. When we deal in metaphor, we have an awareness of the differences between the concepts compared, but focus instead on the similarities of the comparison:
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The key to metaphor, as David Lodge…notes, is the bringing together of similarities with the “awareness of difference”. (van Oort, 2003, p. 270)
So what does a cognitive, sociobiological, or anthropological approach offer towards an understanding our symbolic preoccupations? Having splashed around in this fairly deep meme-pool for several months, the most compelling and illuminating work I can find is neuroscientist Terrence Deacon’s 1997 book The Symbolic Species: The co-evolution of language and the brain. Deacon’s argument is that the development of symbolic representation (that led ultimately to language) was the decisive evolutionary step that separated modern humans from the other animals. Most importantly, like Wilson, he suggests that our capacity for symbolic representation and language arose from the co-evolution of genes and culture:
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…putting evolutionary causes and effects in appropriate order and precisely identifying the anatomical correlates of this transition are a prerequisite for providing anything beyond “just so” versions of the process. The key to this is the co-evolutionary perspective which recognises that the evolution of language took place neither inside nor outside brains, but at the interface where cultural evolutionary processes affect biological evolutionary processes. (Deacon, 1997, p. 409)
In semiotic terms, Deacon defines symbolic representation as including relationships between symbols; that is, the connection to a physical object or event may be lost. Deacon believes that what distinguishes homo sapiens from our evolutionary near-relatives, and what stimulated the development of this form of symbolic representation, was the dilemma of providing for a social structure within which children might be raised:
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Symbolic culture was a response to a reproductive problem [group hunting/gathering and provisioning of mates and offspring] that only symbols could solve: the imperative of representing a social contract. (Deacon, 1997, p. 401)
Whether this hypothesis for our symbolic culture’s origin can ever be proven to be true or not, is less important than the neurological evidence of symbolic capacity itself. Deacon’s research into our ability to use symbols shows that in terms of symbolic capability we are not smart apes, and apes are not dumb humans: co-evolution of our anatomical cognitive capability with our cultural symbolic ability has distinguished us from all other animals, and in fact shows that we are ‘over-engineered’ for symbolic representation:
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In evolutionary terms, it would be accurate to say that the genetic basis for symbol-learning abilities has been driven to “fixation.” In other words, it has become a universal trait of the species. Though there may be variations in this ability among people, essentially all of this variability is above the threshold necessary for acquiring symbols...I want to suggest that the neuroanatomical evidence of massively altered brain proportions and the anthropological and clinical evidence for universality of symbol learning across a wide spectrum of circumstances indicate that the human brain has been significantly overbuilt for learning symbolic associations. (Deacon, 1997, p. 412--3)
This provides a plausible explanation of why symbols should be so central, and arguably inevitable, in both life and language. It is satisfying to think back to the example of Ennis and Jack that we started with – how the difficulty to express or realise a deep emotional experience should lead to a symbolic abstraction of the issue, and result in its essence being conveyed in metaphor.
Nevertheless, we speak today, and some of our ancestors did not, so language, like other human cultural manifestations, has an evolutionary trajectory. But that trajectory – from symbolic representation to language – is not yet properly mapped: competing hypotheses abound, from language as a non-contact kind of primate grooming, to its origins as a derivation of song and dance. Terrence Deacon warns of the difficulty of explaining the evolutionary path followed by language, when there are no lesser forms to compare it with:
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Of no other natural form of communication is it legitimate to say that “language is a more complicated version of that.” It is just as misleading to call other species’ communication systems simple languages as it is to call them languages. In addition to asserting that a Procrustean mapping of one to the other is possible, the analogy ignores the sophistication and power of animals’ non-linguistic communication, whose capabilities may also be without language parallels. Perhaps we are predisposed to see other species’ communications through the filter of language metaphors because language is too much a natural part of our everyday cognitive apparatus to let us easily gain an outside perspective on it. (Deacon, 1997, p. 34)
Specifically, he identifies the difficulty of expecting to find an archaeological record of language evolution:
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If modern language abilities appeared all of a sudden in human prehistory, then we ought to find numerous other correlates of a radical reorganisation of human behaviour and biology…Not surprisingly, many have been “discovered” in the record of human prehistory. They include: abrupt technological transitions (eg. the first appearance of stone tools or of extensive cultural variations in tool design); possible punctuated speciation events…; rapid population changes…; and signs of major innovations in cultural artefacts…But because they offer evidence that is indirect, as best, and so sparse and fragmentary, paleontological finds can appear irregular for many other reasons. (Deacon, 1997, p. 36)
But language, in Deacon’s use of the term, is language: whatever its precise evolutionary trajectory, and whatever the balance of the contributions of culture and biology, it remains what it is – the defining feature of humanity, that distinguishes us from other animals.
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...[L]anguage must be viewed as its own prime mover. It is the author of a co-evolved complex of adaptations arrayed around a single core of semiotic innovation that was initially extremely difficult to acquire. Subsequent brain evolution was a response to this selection pressure and progressively made this symbolic threshold ever easier to cross. This has in turn opened the door for the evolution of ever greater language complexity. Modern languages, with their complex grammars and syntax, their massive vocabularies, and their intense sensorimotor demands, evolved incrementally from simpler beginnings. (Deacon, 1997, p. 44)
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| Contents > Mis-Perception: Metaphor as a metaphor for the reception of fictional narratives by Russ Swinnerton |