Language: Communication centric
Naorem Nishikanta Singh *
Communication has been evolved with language or language has been evolved with communication precisely saying interwoven, even though no one can predict the tentative date or year how and when language was begun to use for communication.
But it is certain that a sign or signal (to communicate) gave birth to language according to the law of nature. The languages which we are using today break through enormous hurdles to get in its present form with the evolution of mankind as we are well acquainted with Darwin's Theory of evolution depicting how today's human took various forms and stages from its primates or say ape to present intelligent structure form of human. The sounds or signals which are responsible to renovate into language are the imitations of nature.
The cavemen who did not spoke even a language had the conscious of communication. They had the art of making symbols representing heavenly bodies or animals or plants to say something to their mates or groups or to their offspring who were going to be civilized human one day.
As the language transformed from sign or crying to a written form after a long journey of renovation. The cave paintings narrate us the story of social activities, hunting or seasonal changes without a word or language which could effortlessly told us.
With the civilization evolved from nomadic hunters to agrarian society they had needed to keep on accounting their credit or debit. And thus they shaped specific forms of objects for instance the Mesopotamian civilization between 8000 and 3100 BCE. Around 3100 BCE shaped tokens were replaced by drawings and again the image system ended with the emergence of a system for graphically recording spoken language.
Thus they were continuously hunting for an easier or handy way to communicate. In 3100 BC the Egyptians began using written hieroglyphs, a pictorial language; each symbol was representation of an item. But these could not be considered as true system of actual writing.
The actual art of writing is called Cuneiform and it was the earliest system of writing which was used in a number of languages between 34 century BCE through the 1st century CE. This art is making a symbolical word representing an object by impression on wet clay tablets. The pictogram characters of cuneiform are quite resemble with Yingzi, the Chinese script.
The civilizations around the world carried a message of language and the importance of communication. Language, no matter the form it may be, has been needed to communicate oneself or with other as in intrapersonal, interpersonal, group or mass communication and here the language can be defined in terms of signal. The information to transmit is encoded in the signal and the receiver decode it after passing through a medium and the information is either discuss or digest to take an action accordingly.
Mankind needs several elements to make comfort and develop themselves and language is one among them. A comfortable life contributes to create a civilized society and what we call a civilized is when the various form of media, tele-communication systems, IT gadgets, Internet, and , mobile phone are ubiquity to disseminate the information or communicate.
For instance the study on two villages of Andhra Kothuru and Pathuru realizes the importance of communication system in development and language does matter here as it is mean of communication and it has incredible persuasive power. In the early Western society the theory on communication was mostly persuasive and the Greek theories aimed to influence others, called Rhetoricism (the craft of persuasion).
The foremost initiative of developing language in the Eastern civilization followed the similar path as Western where the ultimate structural compilation turns into their holy books � Vedas, Upanishads, Puranas and Bhahmanas. These literatures were handed down to us generation by generation but we hardly trace the footprint hitherto.
In-depth analysis of the abovementioned literature brings closer to religion, spiritual, or supernatural consciousness about life, regarding which I am very novice. Nevertheless language has been the tool to disseminate the thoughts from our godly ancestors since centuries ago.
* Naorem Nishikanta Singh wrote this article for Hueiyen Lanpao
The writer is a Research Scholar, Department of Mass Communication, MU.
This article was posted on May 09, 2013.
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