(Note: This post is the eighth in a series of posts exploring the contents of Jean-Louis Dessalles' book, Why We Talk. For a summary of what came before see Why We Talk: Summary.)
The switch from protolanguage (drawing attention to figures) to language (drawing attention to figure and ground together) permitted the change from assertive communication to “argumentation.” By argumentation I don’t think Dessalles means that a hominid Bickerson family could argue about whose fault it was that junior was such a devil. Instead he is talking about making and testing your case. That capacity to reason back and forth is what Homo erectus lacked and we have.
It is the final great insight into speech origins presented in the Dessalles account of speech origins.
At least that’s the way it looks to me because it is at this point that the book seems to fall into a huge anti-climax. Today I will present his position and tomorrow’s post will comment.
Dessalles’ method in the final section of the book is “ethological.” He has observed conversations at great length and asserts that “Essentially, human beings use language for conversing” (p. 268).
This point seems especially obvious in the case of speech, although illiterate traditions do include rituals, stories, greetings, and conventional exchanges. Conversation strikes many as too trivial a pastime to justify so mighty a function, but “explanations” that say we developed language to tell stories or perform rituals “are hampered by their self-imposed limitations. If language really had such a utilitarian function, then we would certainly not speak when there is nothing to say” (p. 270).
Instead, speech has an “obligatory” quality. In villages and out on a trail, people who meet are expected to exchange a greeting, and even in the city where people tend to be as oblivious of one another as they are trees in the woods, if they are forced to spend time together they will eventually feel the urge to say something. As Dessalles says, "We are insufficiently surprised by the fact that human beings communicate by constructing conversations" (p. 304).
The rival theory of conversation that Dessalles disputes is the notion of speech acts in which speech is used to control a situation. He sides with Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson’s position that a theory of speech acts is not a theory of language but of human institutions. Sperber and Wilson are the authors of a book titled Relevance which Dessalles criticizes but nonetheless accepts their central thesis that conversation must be relevant. Relevant to what? Let’s just say something appropriate to the situation. Dessalles has conducted experiments in which students suddenly inject inapt insertions into a conversation (e.g., “that trash can is green”) rather like George on Seinfeld and they are ignored or brushed off (as was George).
Conversation takes two major forms: sharing information and argumentation. Sharing information is so universal in the human species that infants begin pointing well before their first birthday, yet it is almost unknown among apes. This fact is well known on this blog. Argumentation has two parts: (a) a speaker says something astonishing and (b) a listener seeks an explanation. The first part of the argument can just as easily be information sharing. If a speaker runs in and says, “There’s a masked man robbing the bank,” that might be information or the start of an argument. If the listener says, “Call the cops,” the exchange is sharing information. If the listener says, “That’s ridiculous,” the conversants are in argumentation mode. The critical point here is that it is the listener, not the speaker, who determines what style of exchange is underway.
Protolanguage was satisfactory as far as sharing information was concerned. The switch to full language reflects a change in the listener’s behavior, not the speaker’s.
So what happened to make listeners skeptical? One guess might be that it promotes problem solving, but conversation is nothing like the problem solving techniques that engineers developed. They rely on a statistical calculation of probabilities and risks, an approach quite contrary to instinctive ways of thinking. Aristotle said that logic is “the mainspring of argumentation” and Dessalles agrees, adding a twist. The evolutionary reason we developed the capacity to argue is to resist lying.
A routine part of conversation is correcting mistakes and trivializing what others say. But why should humans spend so much time correcting one another? If a listener just accepts what a speaker says, the risk is all with the listener. But if the listeners challenge speakers, the risk is transferred. Now it is up to the speakers to justify themselves.
Speech with a skeptical audience will only work if there is something in the exchange for both speaker and listener, but
None of the many attempts to make direct correlations between language and an increased life-expectancy or improved reproductive power has ever produced a proposition that [is consistent] with what can be observed in the actual use of language (p. 336).
Instead Dessalles proposes that speech allows an “asymmetrical exchange” in which the speaker says something and the listener grants or withholds prestige, depending on the value of what was said. To understand what Dessalles means, remember that in council chambers around the world it is the leader who is silent while the advisors speak and gain or lose prestige based on how the leader responds to what they say.
Listeners grant prestige because human society is based on coalitions of individuals whose members became part of the coalition by having other members grant them some prestige. To enter a coalition, individuals have to charm their way in and then keep themselves in by continuing to be “relevant.” They are useful members of the coalition, assuring themselves of status and continued membership. Other coalition members admire such useful members and admiration, “though deeply rooted in our nature, is most unusual in the world of animals” (p. 353) The aim of speech is “to discover whom to choose as allies and to determine who will influence collective decisions” (p. 355). Thus, in the end, the rise of full, syntactical speech fulfills a political purpose enabling the members of a coalition to ally themselves with individuals able to make the most relevant remarks, and ensuring relevant observers that they will be able to prosper.
Therein lies Dessalles thesis: speech arose as a political solution to the need to form coalitions and test the information speakers bring to the coalition.
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