What is language?

[Richard J Senghas]

Happy New Year, Fellow Linganthers!

Ron Kephart's recent posting regarding the popular conflation of writing
and language arrived just as I was browsing through _Gesture and the Nature
of Language_  by Armstrong, Stokoe, & Wilcox (1995) and working with Brenda
Farnell's _Do You See What I Mean?_ (which deals with the problem of
language in a delightfully new way by examining Plains Indian Sign Talk).
As someone whose work involves sign language, I am constantly having to
challenge notions about what language is (or is not), including some
surprisingly naive ideas held by many faculty members.

The term "language" itself may be one of the biggest perpetuators of these
continuing misunderstandings - a deceptively simple and familiar singular
noun that masks the many different simultaneous processes involved, from
neurological to social. Is it even sensible to think of language as a
unified phenomenon? It's as thorny as "culture"!

So once again I'm pondering: what are the most effective ways of getting
students (or anyone else, for that matter) to successfully recognize and
suspend their implicit assumptions about what language is (or isn't) long
enough to critically entertain some alternative perspectives? I'm
interested in both gimmicks and traditional methods. I'm just as interested
in your ideas as to why such methods work (or don't). What aspects of these
methods reveal the local assumptions and ideologies perpetuated in places
where the members of this list work or live?

Richard

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Richard J Senghas, Asst. Professor       | Sonoma State University
Department of Anthropology/Linguistics   | 1801 East Cotati Avenue
Coordinator, Linguistics & TESL Programs | Rohnert Park, CA 94928-3609
Richard.Senghas at sonoma.edu               | 707-664-3920 (fax)