An excerpt from Chapter 4 (The Body of Language) of the book by American ecophilosopher David Abram The Magic of the Senses – Perception and Language in a More Than Human World (DharmaGaia, Prague 2013, pp. 103-107); translated by Michalea Melechovská and Jiří Zemánek.
In our own time it is precisely language, understood as an exclusively human trait, which is most often used as evidence of the superiority of the human species in relation to all other species. Other animals are often depicted as building complex dwellings and even using tools to do so, but language, as is generally claimed, is exclusively human in origin. What is certain, however, is that most other animals can communicate with each other, often using a whole repertoire of gestures, from "marking" their territory with chemical secretions to facial expressions in many mammalian species and the many chatters, screams, howls, wails and growls that echo through fields and forests - not to mention the use of complex melodic songs, as is the case primarily with birds, but also with various marine mammals, such as killer whales and humpback whales. One of the founding events of the science of ethology was the discovery at the beginning of the last century of the “waggle-dance,” by which individual bees communicate to other bees in the hive the precise direction and distance to a newly found food source. However, each of these complex communicative acts—“dances,” “songs,” and gestures, both vocal and visual—remain within the realm of lived, bodily expression. It is believed that the meanings here are tied to the expressive nature of the gestures themselves, as well as
with the immediate sensations that were evoked by these movements – with the immediacy of instinct and bodily urge.
In our everyday human language, on the other hand, we tend to place the dimension of meaning far beyond the mere expressive power of words, on the plane of abstract meanings that are determined, it seems, exclusively by convention. Thus, the English term “Wow!” (“Oh!”) can at first be a simple expression of astonishment, but if we want, it can also denote a certain type of hairstyle or shade of blue or a characteristic tactic that must be applied when talking to fishermen. “Language in the proper sense” has been identified by most philosophers and scientists since the Enlightenment precisely with this second layer of agreed meanings. Only by separating this secondary layer of conventional meanings from the felt significance carried by the color of sound, rhythm and resonance of the uttered expressions can we understand language as a code – as a determined and mappable structure, composed of arbitrary signs connected by purely formal rules. And only in this way, when we understand language as a purely abstract phenomenon, can we declare it to be an exclusively human attribute. Only if we overlook the sensory, evocative dimension of human speech and focus our attention exclusively on the denoting, conventional aspect of verbal communication, can we distinguish ourselves from the rest of living nature and place ourselves outside of it.
But if Merleau-Ponty is right, then the denotative, conventional dimension of language can never really be separated from the sensory dimension of its direct, affective meaning. If we are not, in truth, immaterial souls merely inhabiting earthly bodies, but are from the beginning material, corporeal beings, then what makes our verbal communication possible at all is the sensory, gestural significance of the sounds we utter—their immediate bodily resonance. It is this expressive potency—the sonic effect of spoken words on the perceiving body—that underpins all the more abstract and conventional meanings we attribute to words. Although we may not be aware of the gestural, somatic dimension of language—after having suppressed it in the interest of austere dictionary definitions and the abstract precision of technical terminology—it is nevertheless still subtly at work in every act of our speaking and writing—that is, if our words are to have any meaning at all. For meaning, as we have stated, remains rooted in the sensory life of the body – it cannot be completely cut off from the soil of the immediate experience of our perception without withering and dying.
But to claim that linguistic meaning is primarily expressive, gestural, and poetic, and that its conventional and denotative meanings are inherently secondary and derivative, is to renounce the claim that "language" is an exclusively human property. If language always resonates in its depths with our physicality and with our senses, it can never be completely separated from the overt expressiveness of a bird's song or the suggestive howl of a wolf in the middle of the night. The chorus of frogs croaking in unison on the shore of a pond, the growl of a wildcat pouncing on its prey, or the distant cawing of Canada geese flying south in a flock to winter, all echo the affective, gestural meaning, the same meaning that vibrates through our own conversations and monologues, sometimes making us cry, sometimes angry, or intellectual insights that we could never have anticipated. Language as a bodily phenomenon is its own to everyone expressive bodies, not just human ones. Our own language does not, therefore, place us outside the living landscape, but – whether we are aware of it or not – draws us more fully into its chattering, whispering, resonating depths.
For example, if one has the opportunity to observe two acquaintances who unexpectedly meet after many months, and has the opportunity to hear their opening words of surprise, greetings, and joy, then if one listens carefully, one can easily perceive, beneath the explicitly denoting meaning of their words, a tonal, melodic layer of communication – the one in waves
the rising and falling of the voices in the form of a kind of musical duet, almost as if they were two birds singing to each other. Each voice, each of the two sides of this duet, imitates a little of the melody of the other side, while bringing its own modulation and style, which is then mirrored by its counterpart; in this way the two singing bodies harmonize and tune into each other, rediscovering a common register of voices with which they communicate to each other resembleIt only takes a slight shift in our attention to realize that this melodic singing carries the bulk of the communication in this encounter, and that the explicit meanings of the actual words move on the surface of these depths like waves on the surface of the sea.
Thanks to such a complementary shift of attention, one can suddenly hear the familiar song of a blackbird or a thrush in a surprisingly new way—not just as a pleasant, mechanically repetitive melody that seems to be pouring from a player somewhere in the background, but as active, meaningful speech. Suddenly, the subtle variations in the tonality and rhythm of that whistled musical phrase seem charged with expressive intention, and the two birds singing to each other across a field appear to us for the first time as sentient, conscious beings, deeply involved in the same world of which we ourselves are a part, but from a surprisingly different angle and perspective.
If, moreover, we admit that the meaning uttered remains rooted in the expressiveness of bodily gestures, we will not be able to limit our renewed experience of language to animals. As we have already seen, in the untamed world of immediate sensory experience, no the phenomenon itself does not show itself as completely passive or indifferent. For the perceiving body, they are all phenomena are alive – they actively demand the participation of our senses or at other times they withdraw from the focus of our attention and rather repel our interest. Things themselves reveal themselves to our immediate perception as vectors, as developing modes – not as ready-made pieces of matter given at once and for all, but as dynamic modes that seize our senses and modulate our bodies. Every thing, every phenomenon has the power to affect and influence us. Every phenomenon is, in other words, potentially expressive. At the end of the chapter “The Body as Expression and Speech”, Merleau-Ponty writes:
It is the body that points and that speaks… This discovery [of the body's inherent expressive power]… extends, as we shall see, to the entire perceptible world, and our gaze, prompted by the experience of our own body, will reveal in all other "objects" the miracle of expression.
And so, at the most primal level of sensory, bodily experience, we find ourselves in a landscape full of expressions and gestures, in a world that speaks.
We commonly speak of howling winds and singing streams. But these are more than mere metaphors. Our own languages are constantly nourished by these other voices—the roar of waterfalls and the chirping of crickets. It is no coincidence that when we are hiking in the mountains, we spontaneously use English words like “rush,” “splash,” “gush,” “wash” to describe the rushing waters of a nearby river. For the sound that unites all these words is what water sings to itself as it flows between the banks of a riverbed. If language is not merely a mental phenomenon but a sensory activity of the body, born of our bodily reciprocity and participation, then our speech is surely influenced by numerous other gestures, sounds, and rhythms, not just those specific to our own unique species. If human language truly arises from the perceptual interplay between the body and the world, then this language "belongs" to the living landscape just as it "belongs" to us.