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Oral Society and Its Language

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Jean Lohisse
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Spoken language was long thought to be mankind's earliest means of communication, with visual and gestural languages appearing only later. “ And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field;…” (Genesis II, 20). Today, with the most diverse hypotheses in circulation, the only point on which all scholars agree—in this case, a negative one— is that the question of the origins of language remains to be answered; this has little importance for the present study, and we will not dwell on the problem of origins.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 27 , Issue 106 , June 1979 , pp. 70 - 89
Copyright
Copyright © 1979 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

References

1 It has not been established that the kipu were used to transmit messages; Incan functionaries used them especially for making calculations and taking the census. Some authors suggest the possibility of alphabetical combinations in the kipu, but Vendryes' opinion is that this is certainly a later attempt to adapt the kipu to the European alphabet.

2 La parole chez les Dogons, p. 27. The word "symbol" is used here in a meaning near the one given in the theory of structural linguistics.

3 Mveng, L'art et l'Afrique Noire, p. 70.

4 This has been found only in the Mayombe and at Kabinda. It is used by a woman who, having some complaint against her husband, chooses among her carved wood pot lids one that, presented at table in the presence of friends, allows her to state her complaint publicly.

5 Breuil, Les Peintures rupestres schématiques de la péninsule Ibérique, 4 vols.

6 André Leroi-Gourhan, Le Geste et la Parole, Vol. I, p. 263.

7 Ibid., p. 265.

8 Ibid., p. 266.

9 Ibid., p. 268.

10 The danger of extrapolation from a foreign cultural context is always present: when the Nyimi, the chief of the Kuba, has the head of a ram drawn on his drum, does it mean, as Achten suggests (Over de geschiedenis der Bakuba, "Congo," 1929, Vol. I, No. 2, p. 203) that he is the head of his people as the ram is the head of the flock?

11 Zahan, La Dialectique du verbe chez les Bambara, p. 28.

12 Carothers, Psychiatry, Nov. 1959.

13 A reading of the following passage from Journal d'un Curé de campagne, by G. Bernanos is not without interest for someone who today seeks to find bridges to yesterday: "No one knows in advance what may, in the long run, come from a bad thought. Our hidden faults poison the air that others breathe, and such a crime, the germ of which some wretched person carries unknowingly, would never have borne fruit without this principle of corruption (…) I believe that if God should give us a clear idea of the solidarity that binds us together in good or evil, we could no longer live."

14 When Leroi-Gourhan speaks of the face in language, we may note that there is speech (auditive) and mine (visual). Darwin was more clear on the same subject. He said that gestures require the use of the hands, whereas words leave the hands free for other occupations. In addition, words can reach the interlocutor even when there is little or no visibility.

15 The "balaphone," a xylophone with gourd resonators used in Africa and especially by the Sara of Chad, is carefully conceived to emit artificially blurred sounds. For the musicologist C. Duvelle, in Musique nègre d'Afrique, this is due to a desire to avoid putting the musical instrument into opposition with man (es pecially with the human voice); giving the impression of a masked and distorted voice, but a voice just the same.