Well, good afternoon.

The title this little talk is "What is ?" and of course it's a question linguists and philosophers and so on spend time on.

Well. I'll sketch a strategy towards trying to the question. So, by way of , first of all, let me just that language, whatever it is, is a word, the word "language". Well, do we explain it? How do explain this particular word, or perhaps word? But let's stick to "language".

here are three possible ways might go about it. Let's call A, B & C.

A. might try to establish the true , or essence, of the word. And, effect, that is to try to a single definition.

Or B. might offer a set of definitions. this, of course, is what a dictionary does.

And finally here , let's call it. We might try give examples of the word in variety of its uses.

So 's have a look at these now a little more detail. And the of these three ways of explaining term is, as I say, to a single definition to cover the meaning of the term. Now in case of the word language, we a definition, from R. H. Hall, one, in 1964. Here we go: " is", I quote, "the institution whereby communicate and interact with each other." repeat, "the institution whereby humans communicate interact with each other." And he on: "by means of habitually used , auditory, arbitrary symbols." I'll just repeat whole thing: "the institution whereby humans and interact with each other by of habitually used oral, auditory, arbitrary ." Well, end of quote.

Well , the trouble is with the single , as we can perhaps see from example, that either the definition must very long indeed, or it cannot many of the aspects of language. example, the rich range of the of language. Well, what are these ? What are examples of these functions? 's certainly a rich range. Let's have examples. Call them, from A to .

A. What I call the use. To state, state facts. For , the exciting statement, "We are now Hatfield." That's a propositional use of .

But B. A very different , to express feelings. Now, sometimes language quite dramatic if you say "damn" "ooooh", or something like this, you're a feeling. And you all know context. If you see a horror in the cinema, you can hear expressing their feelings sometimes in these . Well, it's very different from the use quite clearly. It's almost a sort thing, but it's included in language. So exclamations of love, hate, feelings then would be the second .

A third example, we might to give pleasure by exploiting the of words. For example, this is we do in children's nursery rhymes, 't it? Nursery rhyme, you know, a , a little bit of verse which like to hear. For example, "Ding bell, pussy's in the well." Well, children like to hear the repetition the "ell" sound here, the rhyming. that's a sort of primitive aesthetic , the repetition of the sound.

example, of course, again very different, be the use of language to data, to record facts. A historical of this would be the Domesday in England in the year 1086. 'll remember William the Conqueror from Normandy in 1066. Twenty years later he about making a sort of inventory all the wealth in the country had conquered. So in every village, came and counted the number of and this sort of thing and it all down in a book, Domesday book, it's called. So to data is another use of language.

final example would be, very I think, to express one's regional, may be, identity, certainly to express 's identity. There was a recent controversy Leeds, in Yorkshire, where there's quite strong regional accent, and indeed to extent a dialect. Now in Yorkshire, other parts of the north of too, people often say "love, love, ". So, people, especially women, would call "love", it's just a friendly thing. in the town hall at Leeds, was a woman who answered the , the telephone receptionist. When people rang to ask about car disks, or it was, she'd say, "Hello love, do you want? How can I you, love?" And some politically correct said, "Well we mustn't have this. sounds like sexist language" so she ordered not to say "love" anymore. , this could be seen as an on regional differences and a person's sense of self and community.

did we get to? Let's get from "love".

Right, we are about three ways of explaining the then. The first was to offer single definition.

Now the second, I said, is to offer a of alternative definitions as the monolingual does. OK. What can we say that? Well, the advantage over the definition is that the range of allows for a wider range of than the single definition does. Allows a wider range of meanings and . We'll, that's an advantage. But, the would be that even a long of definitions may be far too to give a full understanding of uses of the term, even the set may be too restrictive.

, there's a second way of about it. One might offer a of alternative definitions.

A third now of going about it would to give examples of the word use in a language in order exemplify the richness of the concept, variety of related uses that it . So you might, for example, take to a dictionary of quotations or like this and look up the "language". And see, in the case the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, you look up the word "language" and 'll find quotations there from people such Shakespeare or the more recent poet and so on in relation to .

Now, let's come thirdly to general approach here, to use what 'm calling defining criteria to indicate what language is. This is a scientific . We might wish to have a of defining criteria in order to human language from, other forms of . Now, let's have an example of . A scholar called C. F. Hockett 1960 offered 13 different design features, he called it, of communication. Now first of these was the so-called channel, in other words, in plain , using the voice and the ears. bees, for example, dance, as we told, to show where the honey , but that is not vocal-auditory, so don't count here.

The other, 'll just run through these other so-called features. They've all got, a lot them have rather, technical sounding terms. second would be broadcast transmission and reception. Third, rapid fading. Fourth, interchangeability. , total feedback. Sixth, specialisation. Seven, semanticity. arbitrariness. Nine discreteness. Ten displacement. Eleven . Twelve, traditional transmission. And thirteen, duality patterning. Now, whatever those things are they are spelled out from their terms, whatever those things are, they lists of thirteen different defining criteria. , only human language satisfies all of thirteen features; no other form of does.

So now, what's the ? Using a system such as Hockett's, can take a set of criteria necessary conditions for human language. Necessary , that is, they must be met we are to call the language language. And we can call them sufficient conditions.

Now, in order mark off human language from other of communication then. Conditions which mark human language from other forms of . Other forms, well, computers' language, bees' , birds' language.

So we come to a conclusion. We can attempt answer the question, "what is language?" could use here the philosophical idea the paradigm or central case of concept. That is to say in to understand or to define a , we must understand first of all central case of the concept. One say that if any form of satisfies all of the chosen criteria, of the design feature, then it human language. And if it doesn't, it is not human language. In words human language is the central of language, or the paradigm case language.

Now other forms of , such as those of bees, are central cases than language. They may some, but not all of our features. They may indeed give rise analogous uses of the term "language", that shows no more than that other forms of communication are like language in certain ways, but not others. They are not, to repeat, cases of language. In short, human is the central case of what normally think of as language. We not be misled by some similarities between human language and other forms communication into calling those other forms communication language as though they were a par with human language. As Butler said, so long ago, "everything what it is and not another ."

Now, there's one approach to language is. Now, I hope I've some ideas running. I know you've writing away but do you have questions or comments on language and approach to it.