© Roger M Tagg 2009 revised 2010
Welcome to FROLIO – a new attempt to merge philosophy and the "semantic web" . This website is under continuing development.
Language, historically, consists of a set of sounds which, by consensus among members of a group who wish to communicate with one another, have certain hopefully common meanings. Writing (and computer memory) are developments that allow the communications to be longer lasting and to be deliverable when the people communicating are not in the same place at the same time. There are also other signalling systems, such as Morse code.
Body language may sometimes represent spoken language (e.g. sign language for the deaf), but sometimes not (e.g. frantic waving to indicate one's position, an expression of pain or boredom).
Artifacts (i.e. communications that do not directly represent spoken language) can also be regarded as a language. Examples are diagrams (like the one below); paintings, drawings, sculpture and other works of art; musical compositions, dancing, drama and so on.
Chinese writing was possibly originally an "artifact" language, but has come to become related to the spoken word (although not the same sounds, e.g. when used for both Madnarin and Cantonese).
The girl and the dog are sending information to the man and the dog on the right. The clouds represent their thoughts, while the arrows indicate the direction in which information flows. The paper message, picture and sound show three examples of "media" on which the information is carried; the computer-to-computer link at the top is a fourth example. "Sound" could be direct voice, a loudspeaker (as shown) or telephone.
The pink blocks represent what I call a Form of Expression; they translate the sender's thoughts into whatever the medium can carry. With sound, they usually come from the mouth (for girls and dogs - crickets are different). With writing, typing and creating a drawing or work of art, they come via the hands.
The blue lenses represent the primary senses of the receivers, e.g. eyes, ears etc. The yellow lenses represent interpretation, or processing, of the information detected via the senses. Human interpretation my be quite complex, combining emotion, life experience, learning and models of rationality. There may be multiple stages of interpretation. However it all usually happens unconsciously.
The picture "tropical rain" at the bottom is intended to indicate natural phenomena, i.e. what we experience that isn't deliberately "sent" by an animal or human sender.
We can clearly not do without language. My question is, have the languages that we use - like religion - been hi-jacked by generations of power-seekers?
Index to more of these diatribes
Some of these links may be under construction – or re-construction.
This version updated on 30th January 2010
If you have constructive suggestions or comments, please contact the author rogertag@tpg.com.au .