Language and Its Origins as Social Communication

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The fact that we use language, not just to accurately describe the world, but to persuade people or to advocate for certain positions is part of what we need to do and want to do. And mayben wind things up. This might be, may or may not be a good thing to do. So you can tell me, but i kind of feel like we should give some credit to the lawyers, not just scientists. A what is the what is the kind of insight into language and its origins as social communication tell us about that, those aspects of language.

We describe the world using language — we can’t help it. And we all know that ordinary language is an imperfect way of communicating rigorous scientific statements, but sometimes it’s the best we can do. Linguist N.J. Enfield argues that the difficulties run more deeply than we might ordinarily suppose. We use language as a descriptive tool, but its origins are found in more social practices — communicating with others to express our feelings and persuade them to agree with us. As such, the very structure of language itself reflects these social purposes, and we have to be careful not to think it provides an unfiltered picture of reality.

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N.J. Enfield received his Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Melbourne. He is currently a professor of linguistics and Director of the Sydney Social Sciences and Humanities Advanced Research Centre at the University of Sydney. His recent book is Language vs. Reality: Why Language Is Good for Lawyers and Bad for Scientists.

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