Andrew Davidson
Integrated Liberal Studies, Self-Unit
DUE: 1/11/16
Ms. Baker
Not Just Another Animal:
Humans’ Exceptional Ability to Transform Communication into Language
“Since time immemorial [speech] has been correctly acknowledged to be man’s most
outstanding trait” -Hans Jonas (Nicol, 38)
Humans have been trying to answer two simple questions for thousands of years: “What
are humans? And who am I?” In Victoria Sweet’s book God’s Hotel, she explores these
questions seeking some “hidden place, unexplored and unexplorable” within a recently deceased
patient’s body that defines the self (Groopman, 2). Sweet felt “strangely disappointed” when
there was no such place, but still sensed that something was missing (Groopman, 2). While
Sweet fills her void with a variety of spirits that she believes give us life, an alternate approach to
identify the ‘something missing’ is to analyze what makes humans distinct. This is no easy task.
As Nicol notes in her essay “Do Elephants Have Souls?”, humans have been known to
distinguish themselves with their “reason, language, art, technology, religion, walking upright
and use of hands, knowledge of mortality, sin, suicide, and more” (Nicol 14). However, in her
essay, Nicol demonstrates that many qualities that humans believe make them unique are
actually shared with other animals, or more specifically, elephants. Nicol describes the
sophisticated communication of elephants that involves “a vocal range of ten octaves” and
seismic waves, making the elephants’ communication biologically superior to that of humans
(Nicol, 40, 41). However, her essay does not stress the distinction between basic communication,
a mere transmission of messages, and human’s nuanced language, a complex cultural syntax that
carries emotional connotations and immense meaning. While communication is a shared trait,
humans have uniquely transformed communication into language, a tool to convey their
emotions and to help define their notions of self. This contrast between communication and
language elucidates the distinct identity of humans: humans are not distinguished by their
physical characteristics and abilities, but rather by the way in which they make use of them.
The difference between communication and language has become an essential part of the
collective human experience, as shown through Geertz’s analysis of culture’s role in the
development of man and Hoffman’s experience losing touch with language. In Geertz’s essay
“The Impact of the Concept of Culture on the Concept of Man,” he describes language as the
“interactive, nonadditive outcome” of biology and culture (Geertz, 3). Breaking down language
into these two categories, he claims, “our capacity to speak is surely innate, [while] our capacity
to speak English is surely cultural” (Geertz, 3). While Nicol describes the complex
communication systems of elephants, she discusses the fact that elephants can communicate, but
she does not delve into the cultural impact of the elephants communicating (i.e. she does not tell
us that elephants can evoke emotion while communicating). Geertz shows that our capacity to
communicate (or transmit messages) is biological, while our capacity to evoke emotion and
organize our notions of self with language is cultural. In Hoffman’s Lost in Translation, she
describes human language stripped of its cultural identity in reflecting on her experience moving
from Poland to Canada and needing to learn a new language. She notes the striking difference
between the “vital, energized,” and personal meaning of the word for river in her native language
and the “cold...naked” word in her new language that “has no accumulated associations for
[her]...does not give off the radiating haze of connotation...[and] does not evoke” (Hoffman, 2).
While Hoffman can communicate in the sense that she can transmit basic messages to other
people in her new language, she can no longer employ the unique cultural aspect of language,
and this drains her world “not only of its significance but of its colors, striations, nuances...”
(Hoffman, 2). When Hoffman could only communicate and did not have control over language,
she felt as if she did not “really exist,” or, in other words, as if she were not truly human
(Hoffman, 2).
Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz illuminates language’s power to convey one’s
emotions to others. In the Lager, the dehumanized prisoners have lost the ability to communicate
via language because of “a perpetual Babel” of languages (Levi, 38). Because the prisoners and
guards come from different places throughout the world, they cannot communicate in one
language, but rather they need to settle on a feeble compromise of two or more languages. Like
Hoffman’s experience in struggling to communicate her emotions after moving from Poland to
Canada, this compromise reduces language to the communication of animals. Levi denounces the
tone of the “outlandish orders” of the guards as “curt, barbaric barking of Germans” (Levi, 19).
Meanwhile, he demonstrates the emotional resonance that can be achieved in his native Italian
language, as he dreams, “And a woman would pass, and she would ask me ‘Who are you?’ in
Italian, and I would tell her my story in Italian, and she would understand” (Levi, 43). While
the German language is described as a mere ‘barking’ that can only transmit messages, when
Levi speaks in Italian, language has the ability to convey emotion, or, in this case, sympathy.
Levi demonstrates that a conversation between two people speaking the same rich language has
the essentially human power to, as Hoffman puts it, evoke.
While language can communicate emotions externally, it serves internally as the
organizer of the self. In Alison Gopnik’s The Philosophical Baby, she describes a figurative
executive control that places autobiographical memories (memories whose sources can be
readily traced) on a timeline, which goes onto serve as a simplified representation of “our
current, past, and future selves” (Gopnik, 149). Young children lack this ability to have a clear
notion of self, and Gopnik explains this in saying “autobiographical memory and executive
control are developing in tandem with the ability to use language” (Gopnik, 156). Because young
children have not yet fully developed language, they do not have the internal capacity to organize
and catalog their memories. Language, not simple communication, is the driving force behind
defining ourselves. Hoffman lost her ability to spin “out the thread of [her] personal story”
because she could not add “the day’s experience,” or her autobiographical memories, to her
timeline (Hoffman, 2). Similar to the young children in Gopnik’s text, Hoffman cannot define
herself because she lacks language and only has brute communication. Defining our notions of
self is a deeply meaningful experience as humans, and it cannot be driven by elementary
messages of communication. Rather, the self can only be organized by a language that can evoke
with words that have “modulations and quiet undertones” (Hoffman, 3). Humans need language
to, quite simply, be human.
Clearly, language is an essential part of the human existence, yet to say it is distinctly
human is to assume that other animals do not have the same ability to use communication
beyond exchanging messages. From Nicol’s piece, we learn that elephants have a complex form
of communication. In addition, zoologist Ivan T. Sanderson reflects after years of studying
elephants, “it almost looks as if, despite all that we like to believe, we humans are not the only
creatures that possess what we call emotions and higher feelings” (Nicol, 21). If elephants can
communicate and supposedly have ‘higher feelings,’ it is possible that they have their own
cultural syntax that mirrors human language. However, Nicol reflects, “What elephants may be
lacking most of all is not language but the Rosetta Stone to prove they have it” (Nicol, 38).
While it is unclear at best whether animals can communicate anything other than basic messages,
it is clear that nuanced language is an essential characteristic of human existence.
Bibliography
Geertz, Clifford. “The Impact of the Concept of Culture on the Concept of Man,” ch. 2 of The
Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books, 1973; originally published 1966.
Gopnik, Alison. Excerpts from introduction, ch. 4, and ch. 5, The Philosophical Baby: What
Children’s Minds Tell Us About Truth, Love, and the Meaning of Life. New York: Farrar,
Straus and Giroux, 2009.
Groopman, Jerome. “In a Medical Sanctuary.” New York review of Books, Sept. 27, 2012.
Hoffman, Eva. Excerpts from Lost in Translation: A Life in a New Language. New York:
Dutton, 1989.
Levi, Primo. Survival in Auschwitz. New York: A Touchstone Book, Simon & Schuster, 1958.
Nicol, Caitrin. “Do Elephants Have Souls?” The New Atlantis. 2013. 10-70.