Human Multimodal Communication: From Concrete Processing Systems to the Abstract Organisation of Language

Abstract

The origins of the human language capacity is a much debated topic among scholars. In the late nineteenth century the structure of human thought was believed to be the key to discovering the structure of language and culture. Today, however, research shows the opposite to be true. The neurological foundations for social cognition are the true catalysts for the subsequent linguistic abilities of humans. In this thesis I show that language builds upon imitative foundations that underlie socialisation and culture. These foundations rely on intentional, coordinated movements of the hand to the mouth, present from the fetal stage in both human and non-human primates, and on the ability to cognitively mirror such movements in others. This coordination of movements is believed to be the basis for action-planning and goal-directed thought, which support the development of grammar and syntax. Usually, the debate centres around whether speech stems from gestural origins, with movement through a protolinguistic stage towards language, or whether it was a sudden change in human cognition which rendered evolutionary studies of communication obsolete. However, gesture itself is multifaceted and can be either pre-linguistic or co-speech. Thus, even gesture, which is physical and a concrete mode of communication, can take symbolic forms when coupled with language. In all forms of communication, context is essential for meaning-making. Meaning arises before an understanding of conceptual signs, and has its foundations in cognitive imitation, or mirroring. The imitative approach to the study of language reunites the dualisation created in Western thought of mind from body. It makes the previously mind-independent sign once again dependent on the body. At all levels of culturalisation there is a movement from lower-level concrete processing systems towards higher-level, abstract organisational systems. Thus, the body is the key to language, and the abstract is brought back into the concrete.