“Symbolic Economies” and the Origin of Language - Université Paris Nanterre Accéder directement au contenu
Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2004

“Symbolic Economies” and the Origin of Language

Résumé

The comparison between language and money is recurrent in Western culture (up to Saussure's famous comparison between linguistic signs and coins). More recently, in the 1970's, some philosophers emphasized the concomitant appearance in ancient Greece of specific philosophical categories, and of monetary exchange using struck coins (e.g. Sohn-Rethel); or described money as a general model for any semiotic process involving the creation of values (Goux).
The question of language origin has dramatically evolved in recent years, giving raise to many competing models, none of which however trying to take into account these homologies, first developed in a merely philosophical and sociological perspective. This is what we intend to do, by linking the emergence of language and the emergence of what we call “symbolic economies”. We provisionally define “symbolic economy” as a complex system in which transactions aim at assigning and transferring symbolic values (e.g. values of acts, roles, or even other signs) through a co-emerging semiotic medium. Our guiding intuition is that functions of human languages should be viewed within the social context in which “exodemic” groups co-exist by means of ritualized “protocols” (gift, exchange, alliance, payment, sanction). All these protocols imply an exchange of symbols like objects, gestures, or (proto)linguistic signs, whose symbolic values stem from their involvement in ritualized actions which, on the other hand, cannot be recognized or achieved without the above mentioned symbols.
Although money far postdates language in human history, the use of money reveals social, cognitive and semiotic constraints or resources which presumably are also involved in linguistic activity. The analogy is even more valid if we depart from a strictly utilitarian point of view in economy (Aglietta & Orlean), and a strictly conceptual/referential view, in semantics. Indeed, both money and language provide a “general equivalent” for an open series of occurrences by: (i) elaborating abstract and fictive values in a sensible medium, and (ii) creating a universal reference system, of a fictive character, which regulates all emergent values, including the most basic and individualistic ones. On this viewpoint, the traditional functions of language can be analyzed by analogy to those classically assigned to money (evaluation, diffusion, payment, saving).
The analogy between language and money may however turn out to be spurious if we do not take into account: (i) the archeological and anthropological findings showing various types and functions of “money” in archaic societies, mostly related to the sacred; (ii) the work in theoretical economy describing the concurrent emergence of different “currencies” as a result of a mimetic behavior of agents rather than an application of pre-established values; (iii) the theories in which language activity is primarily considered as a way of evaluating/categorizing actions and roles, and of ‘buying' social position by affording certain symbolic values.
In summary, we (i) describe analogies between functional roles of money and language in human transactions, (ii) present a non-utilitarian “symbolic economy” framework in which such analogies become more effective, (iii) discuss some of the elementary transactions on which this kind of symbolic economy could be based, and (iv) try to clarify the relationship between this speculative model and grammatical categories of human languages (e.g.case roles).
Fichier non déposé

Dates et versions

halshs-00250122 , version 1 (10-02-2008)

Identifiants

  • HAL Id : halshs-00250122 , version 1

Citer

Jean Lassègue, Victor Rosenthal, Yves-Marie Visetti. “Symbolic Economies” and the Origin of Language. 5th Evolution of Language Conference, May 2004, Leipzig, Germany. pp.97. ⟨halshs-00250122⟩
3317 Consultations
0 Téléchargements

Partager

Gmail Facebook X LinkedIn More