The human communication orders and the principle of natural language sustainability

Abstract

As communicating agents, humans have always functioned in the predominantly bi-modal communicative design. The design’s architecture includes the anatomical structures of the audio-vocal modality, referred to here as the audio-vocal subdesign (hence AVO), and the anatomical structures of the visual-tactile manual modality, referred to here as the visual-tactile manual subdesign (hence VIT), respectively. The two subdesigns have always co-occurred and cooperated closely in acts of human communication. This fact has been reported time and again in ample pertinent literature (cf. Armstrong et al., 1995; Corballis, 2002; De Ruiter, 2000; Dray and McNeill, 1990; Duranti and Goodwin, 1992; Johnson, 1987; Kendon, 1972; Kita, 2000; Levelt, 1989; Mayberry and Jaques, 2000; McNeill, 1992, 2005; Nobe, 1996, to name but a few selected sources). The evident interrelationship in the use of the two modalities does, in fact, demonstrate a close integration of the two subdesigns which has been artistically and quite inadvertently captured by Leonardo Da Vinci in his famous Vitruvian Man. The figure may thus be thought of as representing in the most elegant and most precise way the postulated and real synchrony of the two subdesigns in human communicative practice. In the figure which is reproduced below (nr 1), the thick horizontal black line, inserted by the present author, separates the bimodal complex of the said subdesigns from the rest of the human body. In the present account, the bimodal complex of the originally tool-free and thus ear-centred audio-vocal and of the visual-tactile and thus manual-centred subdesigns is assumed to constitute the primary human communication order based on the mouth-ear-hand coordinates It is referred to as the natural human communication order (hence abbreviated as NHCO). The order has persisted from time immemorial until the occurrence of its extension by the augmentation of the hand with the tools, such as the drumstick and various writing devices (e.g. initially sticks, stones, bones, and later pens). It is at this point of human history that the ‘augmented’ human communication orders (abbreviated as AHCO), based on the culture-determined engineering of the mouth-ear-hand coordinates, have emerged. In what follows, a brief discussion is offered concerning the evolution of the human communication orders.