Umwelt and Language

Abstract

It is often asserted that the existence of human language sets us apart from non-humans, and makes us incomparably special. And indeed human language does make our Umwelt (Jakob von Uexkull), our lifeworld, uniquely open-ended. However, by committing what I term the anthropocentric mistake, i.e. falsely assuming that all true reality is linguistic, we close in on ourselves and our language derived practices, and as a result we lose sight of much that truly matters (including a proper understanding of our human nature). Like Sebeok and Hoffmeyer I hold that language is a modeling system, but unlike them I argue that language is not external to the Umwelt, but internal to it. Language changes the human Umwelt not by escaping or sidelining it, but by fundamentally transforming it. In consequence supra-linguistic phenomena as well are modeled as internal to the human Umwelt. The Umwelt model presented is termed the tripartite Umwelt model, and includes three aspects of Umwelt: the core Umwelt, the mediated Umwelt and the conceptual Umwelt. Linguistic practices are placed within the latter, but it is furthermore claimed that a number of animals too have conceptual Umwelten, which are said to be characterized by predicative reasoning, the habitual, mental attribution of specific features to someone or something. The activity of languaging is presented as more-than-linguistic, with reference to the distributed language perspective. Given all the dark matter underpinning and surrounding verbal practices, a foray into the hinterland of language is called for. A section on the genesis and modalities of language addresses the origin and evolution of language, acquisition of language in childhood and a simple typology of the various linguistic modalities of the human Umwelt. The concluding section treats Ivar Puura's notion semiocide, and the question: how can we language as if nature mattered?