Apes gibber, dolphins click, frogs croak, hippos bray and bears growl. These animals use sounds to communicate with one another, to express when they are in pain, annoyed, hungry, ready to mate, to inform each other of danger and the list goes on. Humans have also utilised communication as a tool for these reasons and to express thought, feelings, wants and needs. Communication consists of noises, gestures, and a combination of all senses; an animalistic, and instinctive tool for survival.
Latin, English, French, Mandarin, and many more languages have been established within human communities. Unlike our genetically primitive relatives, the Apes, humans have developed the ability to be creative within linguistics to an extent where 6,909 human languages exist worldwide (Lewis 2009) with much dialect in between. Gestures also come hand-in-hand with communication, which has been used to create a language in itself; sign language.
Humans have become obsessed with communication. "Unlike animal language, human language is also "stimulus-independent." That means that what you say isn't necessarily tied to what happens to you. Of course, sometimes it is; if someone elbowed you in the side, you could say, "Ow! That hurt!" But you could also say "Ow! That hurt!" when you're lying comfortably in your bed, or sing the national anthem when someone elbowed you in the side. (Of course, this might get you elbowed again.) A more realistic example is when you're having lunch with a friend and suddenly bring up something funny that happened to you yesterday. Nothing in your present situation made you say that, but you did. Animal language, on the other hand, is tied to a stimulus: a feeling of pain, the sight of a predator, a desire to mate, and so on (Hirshon)."
Humans have become obsessed with communication. "Unlike animal language, human language is also "stimulus-independent." That means that what you say isn't necessarily tied to what happens to you. Of course, sometimes it is; if someone elbowed you in the side, you could say, "Ow! That hurt!" But you could also say "Ow! That hurt!" when you're lying comfortably in your bed, or sing the national anthem when someone elbowed you in the side. (Of course, this might get you elbowed again.) A more realistic example is when you're having lunch with a friend and suddenly bring up something funny that happened to you yesterday. Nothing in your present situation made you say that, but you did. Animal language, on the other hand, is tied to a stimulus: a feeling of pain, the sight of a predator, a desire to mate, and so on (Hirshon)."
This obsession with communicating everything that has happened to us has lead to amazing communication technology. The possibilities seem endless and thanks to Samuel Morse, the inventor of the telegraph; Guglielmo Marconi, inventor of Morse Code and Alexander Graham Bell the inventor of the telephone, taking us from rock art and the simple letter to the invention of the television, radio and computers. Communication has progressed parallel with technology and to our advantage. We now have Mobile phones, Film, the Internet, Emails, YouTube, Facebook, Blogger; all examples of the expanding use of communication within media.
Sources:
Sources:
Txtface, 2010, Sounds Animals Make, viewed 2nd August 2011.
Bellis, M, The Invention of Radio, viewed 2nd August 2011.
Bellis, M, Morse Code 1837, viewed 2nd August 2011.
< http://inventors.about.com/od/mstartinventors/ig/Samuel-Morse---Patent/Morse-Code-circa-1837-.htm>
Lewis, M 2009, Enthnologue Languages of the World: Statistical Summaries, viewed 2nd August 2011,
Hirshon, B, Science Update: Human Language, viewed 2nd August 2011,
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