date

1815 Dec. Chrestm or Language
1815 Dec.

Chrestm or Language

Ch. 5 Modes of discourse

1

Ch.5. Signs employed in discourse - audible, visible, and their respective substitutes.

At a stage a certain degree advanced in the career of civilisation, man has two perfectly distinct and different modes or instruments for the fixation of thought and the conveyance of it from mind to mind. The one, that in which on the part of him whose design it is to make the communication the instruments employed are measured, or as they are termed articulate, sounds produced by organs which in man are in a peculiar degree, adapted to that purpose on the part of him by whose senses it is the intention of the utterer of these sounds that the communication so made of them should be received, and on his mind the requisite impression should be made, the corresponding organs of hearing: these accordingly may be termed audible signs: the other, that in which on the part of the author of it the instruments employed are certain configurations /perceptible characters/ and on the part of the intended receiver (with the exception of the particular case in which the appropriate organ is deficient) the instruments put in exercise are the organs of sight. These accordingly are termed visible signs.

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    That the signs which address themselves to the ear were the first in use, several considerations concur in rendering manifest.

    One is that the audible form is alike natural to mankind and to the inferior animals. The visible, though, as experience testifies, not altogether incapable of being employed by man in his intercourse with some of the most intelligent species of animals, is not, as far as appears, at any rate, in a degree approaching to that in which the audible is, natural to any of them.

    The other proof is - that of all the denominations by which in any of the civilized languages this mode of communication is designated, the organs of speech are the only ones by which it is ever, in any direct way, designated. Witness this very word language, derived, as it is, from the Latin name for a tongue, lingua. Witness also the other word speech, by which, from what root soever derived, the audible mode /form/ and that to the exclusion of the visible mode /form/ never fails to be presented.

    True it is that for the designation of both alike, there exists in the English the word discourse; which word is moreover derived /[...?]/ from the Latin discursus, having for its logical conjugate the verb discurro. But of the verb discurro, the original import is by far, more extensive, and, at the same time, less appropriate. By it is meant to run over or to run on and accordingly so far is it from being, in any sufficient degree on all occasions appropriate that on many occasions notwithstanding the seeming contradiction, even in speaking of discourse in its visible form, it has been found necessary to put aside that appellation, and, instead of it, to employ the word speech or the word language.

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    The hearing - its organ, the ear - the sight - its organ, the eye - the touch - its organ, the skin, and more particularly the skin of the hand - to all these senses has what is called discourse been made to address itself. Audible, visible, and tangible - such accordingly has respectively been the nature of the signs of which in these several cases discourse, this organ of the mind, has been composed.

    Till a comparatively late point in the time[?] of human existence, of all those sorts of signs, those which address themselves to the ear were almost the only ones in actual existence: to the infinite multitude and variety of these, the few that as yet in those days addressed themselves immediately to the eye formed but a feeble supplement, and a still more feeble and inadequate succedaneum.

    Through the medium of the French word Langue - a tongue, Language - in French Langage - the discourse of the tongue - is derived from the Latin, lingua, a tongue. When addressed to the ear, it is from the tongue that the discourse addresses itself. For discourse, for the product of the operation called discourse, in the form in which it addresses itself to the eye, as contradistinguished from that in which it addresses itself to the ear, neither the French, nor the Latin, nor the English, affords any proper appellative.

    French or English language - French or English tongue - if applied to the contents of a manuscript or a printed book - a palpable contradiction and inconsistency will, upon consideration, be found involved in any one of these expressions.

    Yet for these solicisms however palpable as they are, the demand is frequent, and so urgent, as scarcely to be resisted.