What is language?

1
Answering this question brings us to the heart of the problem that has always been
has been that of the study of language. Each era or each civilization, according to the set
from their knowledge, beliefs, and ideology, they respond in different ways
and consider language in terms of the molds that constitute it. Thus, the era
Christianity, until the 18th century, had a theological view of language, questioning
first of all because of the problem of its origin or, at most, because of the universal rules of its
logic; the 19th century, dominated by historicism, considered language as
development, change, evolution through time. Nowadays, predominant are the visions
of language as a system and the functioning issues of said system.
So, to learn the language, we would have to follow the trail of the
thought that, over the course of time, and even before the constitution of the
linguistics as a particular science has been outlining the different views of
language. The question: 'What is language?' could and should be replaced by another;
How could language have been conceived? If we pose the problem this way, we
we will deny seeking a supposed "essence" of language and present the praxis
linguistics through the process that accompanied it: the reflection it has provoked,
representation that has been made of it. However, some are imposed,
preliminary clarifications to generally situate the problem of language and to
to facilitate the understanding of the successive representations that were conceived by the
humanity.

1. The language, the tongue, the speech, the discourse

Whenever the moment in which language is considered —in the periods
earliest histories, in the villages called wild or in modern times— they
presents itself as an extremely complex system in which problems are intertwined
of different nature.

Firstly, and seen from the outside, language has a material character.
diversified from which one tries to know the aspects and the relationships: language is a
chain of articulated sounds, but it is also a network of written marks (a
writing), or a game of gestures (a gesturality). What are the relationships between
the voice, the writing and the gesture? Why these differences and what do they imply? Language us
It raises problems when we inquire into their way of being.

At the same time, the stated materiality, whether articulated, written, or gestured, produces and expresses (that is,
communicates) what we call a thought. This means that language is the
the only way to be of thought and, at the same time, its reality and its realization. A
it has been raised the question of whether there is a language without thought and a
thought without language. Aside from the fact that silent discourse even
"mute" thought recurrs in its labyrinth to the net of language and could not be without

1
Kristeva, Julia. "What is language?" Language, that unknown: Introduction to linguistics.
Madrid: Editorial Fundamentos, 1988. 7-20.
Hello, it seems impossible, nowadays, without leaving the realm of materialism, to affirm the
existence of an extralinguistic thought. If differences are observed between the praxis
linguistics that serves for communication and, let's say, that of daydreaming or that of a
unconscious or preconscious process, current science attempts to no longer exclude those
particular" phenomena of language but, on the contrary, to broaden the notion of
language allowing him to accept what, at first glance, seemed to not concern him.
Likewise, we will refrain from asserting that language is the instrument of
thought. Such a conception would lead one to believe that language expresses, like a
tool, something — an idea? — external to him. But what is that idea? Does it even exist?
another way that is not through language? An affirmative answer would be equivalent to a
idealism whose metaphysical roots would be too obvious. We observe, then,
how the instrumentalist conception of language is based on the assumption of the
the existence of a thought or a symbolic activity without language leads to
about theology for its philosophical implications.

If language is the material of thought, it is also the element proper to the

social communication. A society without language does not exist just as it cannot exist
without communication. Everything that is produced in relation to language happens to be
statement in social exchange. The classic question: "What is the primary function?
"Of language: to produce a thought or to communicate it?" has no basis.
Objective. Language is all of that at the same time and cannot have one of the two functions without
have the other as well. All the testimonies that archaeology provides us regarding the
linguistic practices are framed within social systems and participate, consequently,
from a communication. "Man speaks" and "man is a social animal" are two
tautological propositions in themselves and synonymous. Therefore, insist on the character
The social aspect of language does not mean that greater importance is given to its function of
communication. On the contrary, after having been used against the conceptions
language spiritualists, if the theory of communication were to take a stance
dominant in the approach to language, would run the risk of hiding any
issues related to the training and production of the speaking subject and of the
communicated meaning that, for this theory of communication, are constants
not analyzable. Once alerted, we can say that language is a
the communication process of a message between at least two speaking subjects,
one the sender or emitter, and the other, the recipient or receiver.

Message
sender recipient

Now, each speaking subject is both the sender and the recipient of its own
message since it is capable of sending a message while decoding it at the same time and
since it does not emit anything that, at first, it cannot decode. In such a way
that the message intended for the other is, in a sense, first intended for the
own speaker: from which we deduce that to speak is to speak to oneself.

Message
 message destination
sender recipient
recipient message

Likewise, the recipient-decoder only decodes to the extent that they can.
to say what one hears. We see, then, that the circuit of linguistic communication is thus
established introduces us into a complex terrain of the subject, of its constitution regarding
the other, from his way of internalizing that other to confuse himself with him, etc.

If there is a practice that is carried out in social communication and through it, language
constitutes a material reality that, while participating in the material world itself, does not
stop asking the problem of its relationship with what is not language, that is
with the external: nature, society, etc., that exist without language, although not
they can be named without this. What does 'to name' mean? How does it happen?
"to name"? And how are the named universe and the universe that names distributed?
Here are another series of issues whose clarification will help us understand the fact.
language

Finally, what we call language has a history that unfolds over time.
From the point of view of this diachrony, language transforms during the
different eras, takes various forms in different peoples. Posed as
system, that is synchronously, there are specific rules of operation, a
given structure and some structural transformations that obey certain laws
strict.

We see then that, as Ferdinand de Saussure observed, 'taken as a whole,

language is multifaceted and heterogeneous; straddling different domains, both physical,
philosophical and psychic, also belongs to the individual domain and the social domain; it does not
doesn't fit into any of the categories of human facts, because it is unknown
how to unwrap your unit." Due to the complexity and diversity of the
problems it poses, language requires the analysis of philosophy, anthropology,
from psychoanalysis, sociology, not to mention the various linguistic disciplines.

To isolate from this mass of traits related to language a unified object

and susceptible to a classification, linguistics distinguishes the language part within the
set of language. According to Saussure, "it can be located in the determined portion
of the circuit in which an auditory image (i) is associated with a concept (c)" and Saussure gives,
of the circuit, the following diagram:
The language is 'the social part of language', external to the individual; it is not modifiable by
the speaker seems to obey the laws of a social contract that would be recognized by
all the members of the community. Thus, the language is isolated from the whole
heterogeneous language: only retains a 'system of signs in which the only essential
it is the union of meaning and acoustic image.

If language is, so to speak, an anonymous system made up of signs that combine to

based on specific laws and if, as such, it cannot be carried out in the speech of any
subject, "only exists perfectly in the mass," while speech is "always
individual and the individual is always the owner." Speech is according to the definition of
Saussure "an individual act of will and intelligence": 1) the combinations
through which the speaking subject uses the language code; 2) the mechanism
psychophysical that allows him to externalize those combinations. Speech would be the sum:
a) of the individual personal combinations introduced by the speaking subjects;
b) of the phonation acts necessary for the execution of such combinations.

The distinction between language, tongue, and speech, discussed and often rejected by certain
modern linguists, however, serves to generally situate the object of the
linguistics. For Saussure himself, it involves a division of the study of language into
two parts: the one that examines the language, which is therefore social, independent of
individual and "only psychic"; and that one, psychophysical, which refers to the part
language individual: speech, including phonation. In reality, both parts are
inseparable from one another. For speech to occur, the tongue is
indispensable beforehand, but at the same time there is no language in the abstract without its
realization in speech. It requires, therefore, two linguistics that are inseparable from one another:
linguistics of language and linguistics of speech, although it is true that the latter is found
in their first babblings.

The introduction of concepts from communication theory in the field

linguistic contributes to a new formulation of the distinction between language and speech and to a
new and operational significance of it. The founder of cybernetics, Norbert
Wiener had already observed that there is no fundamental opposition between the
problems that arise for communication specialists and those that are posed
for linguists. For engineers, it is about conveying a message through a
code, that is, a minimum number of binary decisions, or rather, from a system of
classification or, let's say, of a scheme that represents the invariant structures and
basics of the message, structures specific to the sender and the receiver, and based on the
the receiver will be able to reconstruct the message itself. Similarly, the linguist can find
within the complexity of the verbal message, some distinctive traits whose combination
the code of that message enables it. As Roman Jakobson observes,
interlocutors belonging to the same linguistic community can be defined
like the effective users of a single and same code; the existence of a code
Common grounds the communication and makes the exchange of messages possible.

The term discourse refers strictly and unambiguously to the manifestation of the
language in living communication. As Emilio Benveniste emphasizes, it opposes,
therefore, to the language that encompasses from now on the language as a set
of formal signs, stratified in successive steps, forming systems and
structures. Discourse implies, first of all, the participation of the subject in its
language through the individual's speech. Resorting to the anonymous structure of the
language, the subject is formed and transformed in the discourse that communicates to the other. The
the common language for all becomes, in discourse, a vehicle for a unique message,
specific to the particular structure of a given subject that leaves on the structure
mandatory language the mark of a specific seal in which the subject is marked
without being aware of it, however.

To solidify the framework of discourse, it has been possible to oppose that of speech and history.
For Benveniste, in historical enunciation, the speaker is excluded from the narrative: all
subjectivity, all autobiographical references are barred from historical enunciation
that constitutes a mode of enunciation of truth. The term "discourse",
on the contrary, it would designate any statement that integrated into its structures
the speaker and the listener, with the former's desire to influence the latter. The discourse is
turns, in turn, into the privileged field of psychoanalysis. "Its means —says
Lacan—, they are those of speech insofar as they confer meaning to the functions of
individual; its domain is that of concrete discourse as a transindividual reality
of the subject; its operations are those of history in that it constitutes emergence
of the truth within the real.

It is now clear that studying the language, capturing the multiplicity of its aspects and
functions, is to build a science and a stratified theory whose different branches are
they will take care of the different aspects of language in order to provide us, at the time of the
synthesis, an increasingly concrete understanding of the significant functioning of
man. To that effect, it will be essential to know both the vocal language and the
writing, both language and discourse, the internal systematics of the statements and their
relationship with the subjects of communication, the logic of historical changes and the
link of the linguistic level with the real. In this way, we will approach the laws
specific to symbolic work.