> How is language a "technology" in the same manner as soft and hard
> ware--or even a burnt stick?
>
> Jess
The notion that language is a technology isn't mine. I find it a useful
notion.
I think I first became aware of the idea when reading McLuhan and Ong. In
Understanding Media, McLuhan said "The spoken word was the first technology
by which man was able to let go of his environment in order to grasp it in a
new way." And Ong looked at the cognitive (the term he used was 'noetic')
differences that arise between people and cultures where writing is present
or not.
What is technology? Well, technology consists of tools. Language
is--possibly among other things--a tool. Significant technologies/tools are
passed from generation to generation. They help us do things we couldn't
otherwise do. Technologies that have been used for a long time and continue
to be widely used tend to have been subject to countless innovations. They
are developed collectively. An individual can influence the technology but
can't really dominate it; the use and development is fundamentally public;
all the crucial ideas in it and all the rules of it are widely known.
Some people maintain that language is innate and is no more a
technology/tool than is walking upright. But even if we do have some sort of
innate capacity for language, we have developed language over millenia very
like we have developed other technologies. Whatever innate capacity we have
for language is a very fundamental and relatively simple thing, whereas
around and within language have accreted scores of technologies ranging from
complex grammars to periodic sentences to subtle humour, rhyme, pentameters,
mnemonics, symbolic notation, papyrus, printing presses, typewriters, and
computers.
Language is undoubtedly more than a tool, but it is also a tool.
ja
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