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Abstract

Language is the main distinctive feature of our species. Why do we feel the urge to communicate with our fellows, and why is this form of communication, characterised by relevance, unique in animal kingdom ? In this chapter, we will first stress this specificity of human communication. In a second part, using computer evolutionary simulations, we will dismiss the usual claim that human communication is a specific form of reciprocal cooperation. A Darwinian account of language requires that we find a selective advantage in the communication act. We will propose, in the third part of this chapter, that such an advantage can be found if we consider language activity in the broader frame of human social organisation. In the continuation of the 'chimpanzee politics' studied by de Waal (1982), the ability to form large coalitions must have been an essential feature of hominid societies (Dunbar 1996). We will suggest that relevant speech originated in this context, as a way for individuals to select each other to form alliances.

@incollection{dessalles00languageAnd,
  author={J-L. Dessalles},
  title={Language and hominid politics},
  year={2000},
  address={Cambridge},
  editor={Chris Knight and James R. Hurford and Michael Studdert-Kennedy},
  publisher={Cambridge University Press},
  booktitle={The Evolutionary Emergence of Language: Social Function and the Origins of Linguistic Form},
  url={http://www.isrl.uiuc.edu/~amag/langev/paper/dessalles00languageAnd.html}
}

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