Language is design

Saussure says all language is arbitrary... do we agree?? Semiotics is the science..




The idea being that language is made up of signs, which are composed of concepts and sound patterns.

The most obvious example is the concept of a "cat".. An actual purring cat in no way relates to the word and sound pattern "CAT" which is made up of the letters C-A-T.. to express a cat in all its catness, the word "cat" will only communicate to those who understand the word in english ...

the french word for the concept of a cat is CHAT, german - KATZE, italien - GATTO, greek - γάτα, japanese - 猫 and so on and so on...

None of these actually express the true concept of a cat, the latin & greek alphabet at least, are just arrangements of letters to form sound patterns... the Japanese evolved from pictures but is cryptic without some familiarity to say the least..


Bellow see example with the french word for tree....
We can see a clear division between the word arbor and the actual image of the tree.

Saussures musings on language have profound implications on the way we interact with the world today... The majority of our activities are dependent on communication, language is the crucial mediator of our dialogue of exchange....

Throughout history a number of people have attempted revisions on our language systems, 1443 in Korea, Sejong the Great got all the best scholars and linguists in the country together to devise a new alphabet, which would differentiate Korea from China and be accessible to the common man.



The result was Hangul script, which features characters specifically designed to represent the position of the tounge in the mouth.


e.g.

ㄱ = [k] tongue blocking throat

ㄴ = [n] tongue touching upper jaw

ㅁ = [m] represents shape of the lips


Hangul is praised as being one of the most phonetically logical alphabets used today...

ㄴㅁㄴ

Another example of a re-designed alphabet was attempted by Alexander Melville Bell (father of Graham Bell - inventor of telephone). Bell put together an alphabet called 'Visible Speech' similarly to Hangul it uses a system based on the organs of articulation, and is designed to be intuitive to learn.

Apparently using visible speech it is possible to transcribe a cough, expressive beyond most used alphabets.



So, we've got an idea of how the positioning of the organs of articulation (tongue, lips, teeth) are integrated into script in two examples, what other modern symbols can we find?

Pictograms are the obvious solution, visual communication is an intelligent system to communicate across cultural barriers... Airports and packaging are obvious places where these visual cues are increasingly relied on beyond script.

The closer pictographic images become to truly representing our needs, the closer we get to inventing a different kind of communication...


The phenomenon of the emoticon or smiley, is the last form of visual communication to be eluded to today and possibly the antithesis to semiotics.

While the first record of emoticons is attributed to Anthony Bierce in 'Puck Magazine', 1881, and was a smiling mouth written - \__/

Plato computer systems introduced the first emoticons, :-) to the internet in 1982, claiming to have developed them to an art form by 1976!

We now have a wide range of emoticons which function as posthuman hieroglyphs, these emoticons directly convey feeling and meaning, in a way that scripted language alone does not.



The fact that these are typed in a similar manner to typing in hieroglyphic languages such as scripted Kanji or Pinyin only enhances the universality and fundamental non-arbitrariness of their nature. A direct translation would not be so much the word, happy or sad, but the sound pattern relating to happy or sad, i.e. [sigh of pleasure] or [sob].

Could emoticons be the key to a non-arbitrary alphabet?