A society shares a language

The argument

This argument treats language not as one feature a society happens to possess but as the condition that makes a society possible at all. The reasoning proceeds in two steps. The first concerns what language does. Language is the critical component in the forming and storing of ideas: a thought must be given linguistic shape before it can be held, revisited, or passed to anyone else. From that it follows that language is also the foundation for the exchange of ideas, and so for the social bonds built out of that exchange — the mutual understanding, obligation and shared expectation that compose the web of a society. Remove a common language and there is no medium through which those bonds can be formed. On this account a society cannot come into being without one; the shared culture that defines a society is in the first instance a shared means of expressing it. The second step concerns what language signifies. Beyond its practical work of transmission, language operates as a marker. People use their language, and more finely their dialect, as a critical identifier of which society they belong to — a way of demonstrating membership and of recognising it in others. Because the particular form of speech a person uses tracks the particular group they belong to, the boundaries of a language and the boundaries of a society tend to fall in the same place. Taken together these steps support a strong conclusion: language is not merely useful to a society but synonymous with it. A society is a shared culture, and the first and most fundamental thing its members share, the thing through which everything else held in common must pass, is a language.

Context

Communication is the foundation upon which all social ties are erected. Without a shared language, there can be no communication. Without communication, there can be no social ties. And without social ties, there can be no society.

Premises

Counter-arguments

If language is synonymous with society, and without a shared language, a society cannot exist, then would that mean that those that cannot communicate within the shared language are not participating in that society? If someone goes deaf and can only communicate in sign language, would that mean that they are no longer able to participate in the same society as those that speak in a shared auditory language? Suggesting that language is a precondition for the emergence of a society puts the cart before the horse. A shared language is the product of a society, not the precursor to a society. Man cannot devise language alone. Therefore, in order for a shared language to be established, there must be some integration, cooperation and the formation of social ties. This means that for a shared language to emerge, there must have already been a society established.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P2] People can share ideas and form social ties without a shared language. [Rejecting P2] A language grows from a soceity.

Framing

A society is made up of social interactions and the exchange of ideas. Underpinning all of this is a shared language. Therefore, society grows from a shared language.