Assignment – Human VS Animal Communication

One of the distinctive possessions of the human race that distinguish them with other species,
is language. It has been discovered that there are about five thousand incomprehensible forms
of language spoken on the Earth today. To some people in Africa, a newborn child is ‘kintu’
which is defined as a thing, not yet a ‘muntu’, a person. The denotation implied in the language
is induced by the believe that only by the act of learning a language, a child turns into a human
being. Generally, language provides a means to convey messages effectively in
communication. However, there have been huge debates over the idea of classifying animal
communication as a form of language. In order to find an answer to that, the key is to grasp an
understanding of what makes a language, a language. Language is defined as a system
consisting of words and signs, that is used in conventional and structured method. Various
studies have been conducted which has led to researchers in claiming that the animal
communication is lacking from human communication in a number of ways, even though they
do share a similar set of features to an extent. There are several differences between human and
animal communication which include displacement, arbitrariness, and creativity (refer to
Figure 1 in Appendix 1).

The first major property that differentiates human and animal communication is
displacement. In human communication, a language enables them to discuss anything, whether
it is inside or outside of the present time frame. As a result, it allows people to exchange
thoughts with each other on abstract or concreate ideas, including both real and imaginary
things, such as histories, Maths theories, mythical creatures and more. Human language
exhibits what is termed displacement, which means it is not purely an automatically triggered
reflex caused by external stimuli or internal emotional states. Displacement is the property that
allows language users to converse about various subjects across time intervals. Moreover, it
enables human to tackle on topics by forming reasons, constructing analysation, before drawing
conclusions in the end. It is a significant human capacity that they have the ability to keep
thoughts in the mind for reflection and to analyse their logic, in relation to facts and memory,
discerned display of attitude or emotions, or indeed means of expressions (Rastall, 2006). In
other words, human communication is context free. On the contrary, animal communication is
merely a response in immediate environment, where danger and food are present to act as the
stimulus. All animals do communicate in some way, but it is suspected that they do not make
reflection on how their communication works. Their communication is exclusively designed

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for this moment, here and now. Their closed system has limited them the ability to produce
new vocal signals, thus the reason for deeming it as context bound. Yule (2010) argues that
implications that are detached from the current time and space can’t be related effectively by
using animal communication. Even though some species of animals do show a degree of
displacement, it does not have the same range of possibilities found in human communication.
To illustrate a point, bees perform the tail-wagging dance to imply to their colony that the
source of nectar is beyond 60 feet from the hive. The dance relays all the information including
the distance by the number of repetitions of the dance per minute; the slower the repetition, the
farther the distance. Similar to human language, the bee’s system of communication is capable
of providing various messages in an infinite number. However, unlike human language, bee
communication is confined to a single subject which is the location of nectar with respect to
the hive. They are only capable in reporting the location of nectar recently detected; they are
not able to recall one that is found last week nor to express parental worries about the work
habits of younger generations of bees in the future. In an experiment, one bee was tricked by
being made to walk in a tube to a rich source of nectar; when she returned to the hive, this bee
performed the tail-wagging dance, demonstrating that the honey was hundreds of feet from the
hive when the actual distance was only twenty-five feet. In addition, just like how newborn
babies instinctively know how to cry and develop the smile reflex later, novice bees have inborn
skill in performing the dance for the first time. The bees' dance is basically an instinct-driven
response to an external stimuli, similar to human laughter, sneezes, or tears but unlike human
spoken words. As outlined by Derek Bickerton (2010), it has been suspected that the necessity
to impart information using displacement has been the evolutionary force resulting to language
development in humans. Thus, displacement is one of the properties that differentiate human
and animal communication.

The second property that distinguishes human and animal communication is arbitrariness.
The concept of arbitrariness in language was introduced by Ferdinand de Saussure, who is also
known as the ‘father of modern linguistics’. Generally, arbitrariness in language means there
is no logical link or connection between signals and the meanings they represent. Instead, the
signal and the meaning are rather conventional. This idea is further enhanced by Fromkin,
Rodman and Hyams (2003) explaining that due to the arbitrary correlation between speech
sounds and the definition they carry in the languages of the world, the words and sentences of
a language will be intangible if the language is not known. Something that does not seem to be
based on any principle, plan, known feature, or have any relation to nature is characterised as

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arbitrariness (Sharpe, 2009). The words or signs in a language have no inherent connection to
what they indicate or refer to. This is why an object could possibly have different names in
different languages. For instance, how the word ‘rose’ refers to a particular type of flowering
plant is not because there is a connection between the sound sequence and the plant, but only
because speakers of English have accepted and agreed for it to be called ‘rose’. Hence, human
communication is often being seen as a symbolic system. According to Hockett (1959),
“Human language is almost wholly arbitrary” (p. 34). In human communication, the language
uses a set of characters and sounds which allows ideas to be transmitted to the succeeding
generation. However, animal communication lack in this criteria due to their usage of sign
language they are born knowing. Their communication ability is passed down biologically and
they do not use any character or alphabet. Animal communication is not symbolic due to the
absence of intellectual capacity in animals to preserve ideas and interpret them in numerous
ways. Thus, human and animal communication differ in the possession of arbitrariness.

Creativity is the last distinctive property that differentiates human communication and
animal communication. Creativity is defined as the tendency to generate or recognize ideas,
alternatives, or possibilities that may be useful in solving problems, communicating with
others, and entertaining ourselves and others. Dobrovolsky (1997) states that various topics
and issues can be produced at any moment by humans. With creativity, humans gather and
utilise their linguistics resources to produce new phrases, expressions and sentences.
Morphemes, phonemes, words and phrases are arranged and reconstructed to create and make
new modes of expressions. For example, the word ‘selfie’ carries the meaning of a photograph
that one has taken of oneself, typically taken with a smartphone or webcam and is shared via
social media. The word has been invented in the twenty-first century and is being used world-
wide to this day. This feature of human communication is also called open-endedness of
language. People can use grammar (rules of syntax) to form a complete sentence in several
unique ways to deliver and transmit a message. For instance, the sentence “John has read the
book,” can be written in a passive manner such as “The book was read by John.” This reflects
creativity in human communication where they are able to form different types of sentences
and expressions to pass on a message. Yule (2010) states that humans are constantly inventing
an infinite number of new expressions and novel utterances by utilising linguistic resources to
describe new subjects and situations. Unlike humans, animals are unable to create new signals
to interact in their communicative system. As an illustration, fiddler crabs have “gesture”
language. To signal to the other members of its “clan”, each species out of the forty different

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varieties species of crabs uses its own distinct “claw-waving” movement. From time to time
and from one crab to another within the same species, their timing, movement and posture of
the body never alter. The meaning of each signal is fixed and only one meaning can be
conveyed. There is only a finite set of fiddler crab “sentences”. The signals cannot be "broken
down" into smaller components in the contrary to human communication where a sentence can
be segmented into smaller elements and categorise them according to parts of speech such as
noun, verb, adjective and adverb. Therefore, creativity is one of the properties that distinguishes
human and animal communication.

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 References

Hockett, C. F. (1959). Animal languages and human language. Journal of Human Biology,
31(1), 32-39. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/41449227
Dobrovolsky, M. (1997). Animal communication. In W. O'Grady, M. Dobrovolsky, F.
Katamba, R. W.Murray, J. Archibald, G. Libben, . . . J. Klavans, W. O'Grady, M.
Dobrovolsky, & F. Katamba (Eds.), Contemporary linguistics : an introduction (pp.
625-662). Harlow, Essex, United Kingdom: Pearson Education Limited.
Fromkin, V., Rodman, R., & Hyams N. (2011). An introduction to language (9th ed.).
Wadsworth.
Rastall, P. (2006).La linguistique. Journal of Language as communication, pattern and
information, 42, 19-36. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/40605084
Yule, G. (2010). The study of language (4th ed.). Cambridge University Press.

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Appendix

Human VS Animal Communicaton

Displacement Creativity Arbitrariness

Figure 1. Differences between human and animal communication