When Animals Speak. Eva Meijer
studies are set up, and the research questions asked, have a great influence on the outcomes.1 For instance, they can reinforce anthropocentrism and stereotypical views about non-human animals with regard to capacities for language use. We find an example of this in Project Nim. Following the Washoe experiment, behavioral psychologist Herbert Terrace set out to investigate whether chimpanzees were able to learn to use grammar, or more precisely, whether they had an innate sense of grammar. The project was inspired by the work of linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky, who argues that the language use in humans is innate, and terms this innate body of genetic linguistic knowledge “Universal Grammar.” According to Chomsky, only humans are capable of using language. In the experiment, a chimpanzee with the name Nim Chimpsky was raised in a human foster family and taught to sign. In his education, much attention was given to sentences, grammar, and linguistic structures.2 Although Nim learned to use about 125 signs, and could use them in simple sentences, Terrace argued that he only learned them by operant conditioning and had no insight into what they meant. In other words, he did not learn their meaning, but simply performed a trick for a reward. This, however, simply reflected the way in which the experiment had been set up and how Nim had been taught to sign; he was given no opportunity to behave otherwise (Hillix and Rumbaugh 2004; see also Slobodchikoff 2012).
There are also more general problems with studying non-human animal cognition and language in laboratories using experiments that treat non-human animals as objects rather than as subjects to be communicated with. Non-human animals in laboratories are kept in captivity, often in solitary confinement, which is morally problematic. They have not consented to the research, and most of them will not leave the lab alive. Many of the experiments inflict pain on animals—conditioning studies are often particularly cruel, and involve withholding food or giving electric shocks—and lab animals usually suffer from stress, loneliness, emotional problems, and behavioral disorders. This also leads to scientific problems. The conditions under which animals live influence the outcomes of studies. For example, keeping social animals alone or flying animals in cages will influence their capacity for problem-solving. A recent study shows that pigeons make better decisions when they are kept in groups, but they are usually kept in solitary confinement for the purposes of research (Laude et al. 2016).
In the language experiments described above, the behavior of the non-human animals involved was influenced by their captivity, including the lack of social interaction with members of their own species. There is, however, another relevant issue at stake, and that is that language is invariably equated with human language, while the results claim to say something about the capacities of the non-human animals used for study. Studying capacities for speaking, signing, or understanding human language in other animals can, of course, give us information about their ways of learning, non-human animal mimicry, memory, emotions, and attunement to humans. Patterson, for example, emphasizes the understanding between herself and Koko, and describes their interaction as rich and complex, with human words forming a bridge between their worlds in some instances and body language in others (Hillix and Rumbaugh 2004). Eye contact is mentioned as especially important.3 However, these studies do not tell us much about the species-specific language skills of other animals. Between themselves, for example, chimpanzees (Hobaiter and Byrne 2014) and bonobos (Genty and Zuberbühler 2014) use a great variety of gestures and vocalizations, many of which we do not yet understand in detail. Studying the origins of human language in non-human primates, dolphins, parrots, dogs, and other non-human animals is furthermore often anthropocentric in nature in that it presupposes that humans are a step further along the evolutionary scale, when in fact non-human and human primates have mutual ancestors, and non-human animals have adapted to their particular environments in intelligent ways.
Language research that sees human language as the only true language not only refers to a flawed view of non-human animals and their linguistic capacities, it is also based on a problematic, narrow idea of language. The idea of a universal linguistic structure that can only be located in human animals is part of a tradition in which human language is seen as the only language, and in which language is seen as interconnected with truth (chapter 1; see also Glendinning 1998). Humanism usually sees human language as that which creates and expresses a distinct break between human and non-human animals. This presumes a specific view of language in which language is the expression of objective, determinate meanings which man alone can grasp (see also Glendinning 1998, 77). The definition of language is here connected to the exclusion of non-human animals in two ways: a humanistic view of language pre-excludes their languages and forms of expression because language is explicitly defined as human language, and it further excludes other animals because language is seen as the expression of objective, determinate meanings that are presented as universally true, but which are in fact based on human language, which means that many aspects of other animals’ languages will be seen as deviations and of lesser worth. In order to further investigate non-human animal languages and to develop a non-anthropocentric view of language, we therefore need a different perspective on language and studying language.
This different perspective can be found in the later work of Ludwig Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein also searches for clarity about the essence of human language. He rejects the view that words have one objective meaning—as he illustrates with the Augustinian picture of language that he discusses in the beginning of Philosophical Investigations (1958). A view of language as fixed and universal comes naturally to humans, and humans need the promise of meaning to communicate; however, if we take a closer look at words, we find that their borders are not clear and limits cannot be drawn around meanings. According to Wittgenstein, we cannot give a single definition of language: there are many different ways in which we use language that are related but do not share one characteristic, so there is therefore no one way to describe them. Here he draws a parallel with the concept “game.” This word can refer to many different games that do not have one common characteristic, even though many games resemble each other and have overlapping similarities; something Wittgenstein describes as having a “family resemblance.” The same applies to the structure of other concepts and to the concept of language itself. This led Wittgenstein to develop the concept of “language games.”
Language as Language Games
Wittgenstein proposes viewing “language” differently, and offers a new way of studying it: instead of defining language, we should find out how it works. This approach is very useful, both in method and in content, for thinking about non-human animal languages and interspecies languages. For empirical and political reasons we cannot yet define what “language” means for all animals; as humans, we do not know enough about non-human animal languages, and it is not up to us alone to decide what counts as language. At the same time, new research forces us to broaden our view of what language is and which species use it. If we follow Wittgenstein’s ideas about language, we see that because of the nature of language, or rather because of how language works, we can never define “language” as such. It is always tied to social practices, and meaning is generated by use. In what follows I will use Wittgenstein’s idea of language as a starting point for understanding how we can conceptualize non-human animal languages as language, finding new ways of studying them, and exploring how non-human animal languages can contribute to how we view language.
Wittgenstein does not give a definition of language games, but he uses this concept to refer to the whole of our natural language as consisting of a collection of language games, as well as for simple examples of language use (PI§7). He also uses it for the most primitive forms of language (PI§7), which are not only available to humans (PI§25). Because of the close connection between meaning and use, Wittgenstein compares language games to tools (PI§11). He emphasizes the importance of gestures and non-linguistic communication in language games (PI§7, see also Wittgenstein 1969). Wittgenstein stresses that language games are open-ended: there is always the possibility of the realization of new language games and there are many language games we do not even recognize as such because the “clothes of our language” (PI, II xi, 224) make everything look the same. To grasp what language is, we should study language games by examining the practices in which they take place.
In language games,