The term "language" is used and abused, and before any discussion it is important to clarify exactly what we mean by this word. Linguists today define language as "the system of rules that relates sound sequences to meanings". I personally find this to be too specific, based on western modes of communication. Indeed these started out in a spoken form, and their written form is nothing more than a way to suggest the sounds of speech through a visual medium. When discussing language as a meaning bearer I believe it is not appropriate to include sound in what should be a broader definition. The Chinese script is a prime example of a linguistic system where sound is virtually useless: visual sequences are related directly to meaning rather than to sound sequences.
Structuralists on the other hand define language as "a system of distinct signs corresponding to distinct ideas." This is much more in the line of what I am interested in discussing in language: the definition implies not only signs associated to ideas, but also a system to tie them together and articulate them. When I'm talking about language then, I mean a system of rules that relate sequences of any kind of signs to meanings. The signs can be verbal (words) or non-verbal (images, gestures...).

The existence of the system is important, because it creates the difference between language per se and linguistic systems. A full-fledged language under the above definition has the following characteristics:

Displacement: the ability to discuss objects not present.
Productivity: the ability to formulate new messages (like the way Lego building blocks can be used for infinite constructions).
Duality: The capacity to attach symbolic meaning to linguistic units.
Cultural transmission: the ability to pass language from one generation to another.

The productivity tenet rules out linguistic systems that are limited to a specific frame of reference, like traffic lights, weather flags, African headdresses that reveal marital status, etc. These non-verbal systems of communication are very efficient, but are unable to "formulate new messages" outside the scope of their field of meaning. They are like model cars as opposed to Lego pieces that can be used to build any kind of car. An interesting point here is the very structuralist fact that a model car is a model of a car, but Lego pieces are nothing at all unless they are assembled in the shape of a car.

The linguistic systems mentioned in passing were deliberately coded and are consciously used. Yet coding and conventionalisation occur on a daily and unconscious basis. Every time we move away from physical reality, coding is present. Even figurative painting, a pure representation of reality, makes use of established codes that are necessary to its legibility.

Suppose you want to draw a king. Odds are the figure you draw will have a crown. Never mind that today's kings dress as everybody else, you are expected to draw a crown are else you'll be asked, "That's a king? Where's the crown?" Convention is much stronger than reality in communication media such as illustration. You can't render exactly what you see in a picture and expect people to automatically recognize what you did. It may have been done with extreme accuracy, but it has neither tridimensionality, nor texture, nor smell or sound, maybe not even colour, and that severely compromises the recognition process. This is why we resort to convention, using pre-established translations of real life into a 2-D medium. When translating an unconventionalised object this way, it is necessary to grasp its most outstanding characteristics to make up for the lack of convention. I faced this problem recently when I had to draw food for a children's animation. I wanted to integrate Lebanese kinds of food, but was stumped: they have never been conventionalised. All the food icons came to us from the west, and there are ways to draw hamburgers, pasta, fruits and vegetable, but nothing for local food. I tried a few goodies with a sort of characteristic shape, but a few days later when I looked at them again I myself didn't immediately recognize what I had drawn. So I dropped the idea and didn't include any "new" icons.

People usually believe children's drawings to be completely fresh and spontaneous thanks to the absence of such a convention. I believe that's not entirely true. I remember as a child in kindergarten and first grade, looking at the conventions used by other children to represent things -- and adopting those conventions. To use a triangle as the female body (a stylisation of a dress), to colour an area in blue near the upper edge of the paper for the sky, with the sun in the corner, these were entirely conventional because they were used so much. When I wanted to draw things I had never seen my peers do -- a fox, a cave --, that's when I had to resort to ingenuity to reproduce them in ways I was capable of. Even there though, I was merely trying to draw the conventions established by adults: stalactites to mean a cave, a red animal with a big bushy tail for the fox. I had never seen either a cave or a fox to be able to use my own eye, which would have lent the "freshness" to the work. I was interpreting interpretations.

Such "codification" is present everywhere in our lives. Try to sneeze with a "WOOPAA" sound instead of the usual and see the look on people's faces! If you read comics you know that sounds are represented by onomatopoeia. The latter are not objective renderings of the sound produced, however, as proved by the fact they vary from language to language. If in English an explosion is rendering KABOOM and a gunshot PAW, in French they are BOUM and PAN. Every often-used sound is coded so that very often just reading the onomatopoeia out of context is enough for us to know if it' s a door creaking, a punch or a tear. Just as in the case of the images above though, when the sound is new, it won't be recognizable without a context to introduce it. For instance if I insist on expressing the sound made by the contents of a purse falling down a flight of stairs, I had better show what produces the unavoidably colourful sound.

Pay attention as you go about your life and you'll notice the high level of codification that is required in every aspect of it.

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Article © Joumana Medlej