The Language Animal: The Full Shape of the Human Linguistic Capacity by Charles Taylor (review)

In this book, Charles Taylor, professor emeritus in the Department of Philosophy at McGill University, presents an understanding of how language plays a constitutive role in the creation and shaping of realms of human meaning. Taylor argues that, since the seventeenth century, theories that understand words as chiefly indicating or describing objects have predominated in Western societies. Taylor argues that this family of theories originated with Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Étienne Bonnot de Condillac, and he designates it HLC. Gottlob Frege's argument that a word's meaning depends upon the sentence in which it is placed and that it has an interpersonal quality transformed this theoretical approach, but its focus on language as primarily describing objects continues. Against HLC rose another family of theories, originating with Johann Herder, Johann Hamann, and Wilhelm von Humboldt (HHH). These individuals understand words to have an intrinsic relationship to the realities they articulate and language to help constitute human relationships and meanings. Language, by articulating felt intuitions, makes what is intuited present and shapes our understanding of it – our reasoning, emotions, and values. In this approach, a word's meaning is holistic, dependent upon the rest of the language that it is part of, which in turn is related to its geographical, historical, and social context. Languages have an innate dynamism as they are continually extended to express new realities or to better express what is commonly experienced. The meaning of human values like love or the good is expressed through enactment, artistic portrayal, and conceptual description, which exist in a dialectical relationship to each other. As such, meanings are hermeneutical; they can never be finally fixed but are subject to ongoing interpretation in relation to human contexts. We know ourselves through language and through the story we tell of ourselves, and, in turn, language shapes the ideals by which we live. Language opens up new realms of meaning and relationships to others as it depicts these. This helps to continually create cultural differences.

Taylor's argument is that only this understanding of language (HHH) is adequate to all the functions that language has. The instrumental understanding of language (HLC) is appropriate for some areas of human life, but it becomes a gross obfuscation of language's nature and importance for human life when taken as being adequate for all aspects of language. For Taylor, it is language and the self-reflexivity it makes possible that separates humanity from animals. Language and a knowledge of it originates from experiences of interpersonal communion. It is learned through, and shaped by, interaction with others.

All of this suggests that each family of theories correlates with an understanding of the nature and purpose of human life. The HLC perspective, in which language is about gaining power over objects in order to pursue ends that are ultimately inscrutable, fits with versions of possessive individualism. In the HHH perspective, human life is about experiencing and exploring transcendent realms of meaning. Much of this can only be done through interaction and cooperation with others. The stakes in this debate are significant.

Taylor's arguments, as is often the case, are illuminating and capable of wide application. As a Christian theologian, I appreciate how his philosophy of language can help make sense of how religious beliefs may shift or change and vary somewhat from context to context, even while claiming to be based on the same texts and traditions. I wonder though about his tendency to delineate human nature from that of animals as a result of our greater language capacity. Taylor typically refers to studies of animal primates and their limited use of tools and language to argue this. But his insight that language arises from, and is learned through, interpersonal communion could point in another direction. Many people might claim to have an I–Thou relationship with their cat, dog, or horse and to experience forms of communion with...