On the Origin of Language [Paperback]

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Author), Johann Gottfried Herder (Author), John H. Moran (Translator), Alexander Gode (Translator)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0226730123 | ISBN-13: 978-0226730127 | Publication Date: March 15, 1986

This volume combines Rousseau's essay on the origin of diverse languages with Herder's essay on the genesis of the faculty of speech. Rousseau's essay is important to semiotics and critical theory, as it plays a central role in Jacques Derrida's book Of Grammatology, and both essays are valuable historical and philosophical documents.

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About the Author

John H. Moran is associate professor of philosophy at Manhattan College. Alexander Gode was professor of German at New York University.

Product Details

• Paperback: 186 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press (March 15, 1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226730123
• ISBN-13: 978-0226730127
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #383,384 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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2 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A Rousseaunian View of the Origin of Language, June 3, 2008

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Eliezer Oyola - See all my reviews
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This review is from: On the Origin of Language (Paperback)

"On the Origin of Language" is a Romantic take on a most controversial subject. Rousseau's argument is that language did not originate as an evolutionary need to communicate thoughts for pragmatic social or economic purposes but for passionate reasons. Early man, in order to woo and conquest the female successfully, needed to develop a language adequate enough to persuade the female to surrender to his passion. Feelings and not thoughts provided the main thrust for the evolution of human language. To support his theory, Rousseau argues that all creatures in Nature already possessed a language adequate enough to communicate such practical needs as the mating call, the announcement of a source of food, or the approach of a predator. Such language consisted of screams, yelps, warbles, screeching, hissing, or roaring, where the sense of hearing was employed. Others employed the sense of sight through displaying colorful plumage, performing ritualistic dances, and the like. And still others deployed the sense of smell by emitting various odors, such as the smell of estrus to attract the male, the smell of feces or urine in marking their territory, etc. Speech, the language of humans, according to Rousseau, originated for the Donjuanesque display of love rhetoric. Today we are aware of the existence of a bicameral brain, where language is processed in the realm of the left hemisphere, the area appropriate for reasoned thought rather than feeling. This seems to contradict Rousseau's theory, since passion belongs in the right brain hemisphere. According to some anthropologists and neuroscientists, the left brain evolved much later than the right brain. Rational thinking, therefore, is a recent adaptation in "Homo sapiens." Linguists point out that speech or talking is the exclusive possession of the human species, "the talking animal." The question remains as to whether speech began before or after the evolving of the left hemisphere. Whether or not we accept all of Rousseau's arguments on the origin of language, his contribution to that field of research is an important one. He would be a must in any attempt to write the history of the question of the origin of language.