Language is for communication.

I will now proceed to my rebuttals and will address my oppponent's arguments one by one. RebuttalsR1) Definition of 'semiotic'My opponent argued that the definition of the term 'semiotic' implies that language must, by definition, be for communication. While I don't challenge the authority of the definition my opponent has given, I will contend that the pure, conceptual meaning of semiotics is the study of signs. For example, Merriam-Webster defines semiotics as 'a general philosophical theory of signs and symbols that deals especially with their function in both artificially constructed and natural languages and comprises syntactics, semantics, and pragmatics'. (1) Thus a semiotic system is simply a system of signs and symbols, entities which include, in Ferdinand de Saussure's terms (2), a signifier and a signified. The communication element is, I'd contend, an element of the associative meaning of semiotics. Communication is simply associated with semiotics because communication is perceived to be the primary purpose of signs, and because much of semiotic study has been dedicated to the communicative element. R2) Body languageMy opponent asserts that body language is a not a type of animal language. I actually challenge the idea that all body language falls into the category of human language. Hockett's design features of language are widely accepted in linguistic study. According to Hockett, there are a few design featuers unique to human language which are absent in animal language. Although the theory has evolved over time, the core elements widely accepted to be unique to humans are: (3) -Reflexivity: We can use language to talk about language, e. g. Don't use a preposition at the end of a sentence! -Displacement: We can talk about events spatially and temporally distant from us, e. g. I saw a strange guy in the pub yesterday. -Arbitrariness: There is little connection between signifier and signified. For example, the word moon is completely random; the moon doesn't go 'moo' like a cow or otherwise exhibit features that would justify the use of moon as a sign. -Productivity (or creativity in Chomskyan linguistics): There is a limitless number of potential utterances in the language. 'The car ate the marshmallow-hating helicopter', for example, is a sentence that nobody has seen before, but any speaker of English can understand it. -Cultural transmission: Culture is passed on from mother to child by language acquisition. This culture is not innate, unlike animal language. Cows are biologically designed to go moo, and pigs to go oink; there is no culture transmission there. -Duality: Human language has two distinct levels, the sound and the meaning. Sounds are limited but meaning is not. We can play with the sounds in our language to produce different meanings. Consider the minimal pair made and paid. Made is broken down to the phonemes /m/, /eI/ and /d/, and we can swap /m/ for /p/ to produce a word with a different meaning altogether. However, animals do not have this two-level distinction. A pig may go oink, a word that means 'I'm starving'. It cannot reformulate the sounds to produce a different utterance, say, roink, replacing the glottal stop at the beginning with the alveolar approximant. The signifier and the signified are processed on the same level, rather than two different levels. (4) I do think that Sign Language is a type of human language, but based on these criteria, other types of body language, like emblems, deictics, beats and iconics, do not fit into any of these, except possibly cultural transmission in some cases. In particular, they are not productive, which also violates my definition of language, in which I explicitly stated that language must be able to expres '[. .. ] a large variety of ideas[. .. ]'. Thus they cannot be regarded as human language. Moreover, even if we were to accept gestures and emblems as types of language and that their primary purpose is communication, note that they only constitute a part of human language. It would be a mistake to overgeneralise this idea by suggesting that since body languages have communication as a primary function, all languages have communication as a primary function. Languages like Chinese, English and French are also language. R3) Correlation of poor communication skills and poor knowledge of languageMy opponent asserts that there is a correlation between poor communication skills and poor knowledge of language. I do not disagree with this notion. I have never denied that communication is one of the many essential functions of language, just not the primary one. By asserting that poor language skills leads to poor communication skills, my opponent has only proved that a primary means of communication is language. Yet to suggest that this indicates communication is the primary function of language is a non sequitur. Let's use an analogy, with the poor instead of tribes, and with money instead of language. A lack of money leads to a lack of power to buy things. This does show that the primary means to settle transactions in modern society is to use money. However, it would be wrong to conclude from this that the primary function of money is to settle transactions. Money performs three other equally important functions: as a store of value, as a unit of account and as a standard of deferred payment. Similarly, while language is an essential means of communication, communication is not the primary function of language. Moreoever, his example of aboriginal tribes is not too relevant because they do not have poor language skills. They are well-versed in their tribal languages and communicate well with one another. If anything, they are better at communication than English-speaking Australians because tribal languages tend to have highly complex grammatical structures that can express ideas more precisely than major languages like English. (5)R4) Reason behind thoughtMy opponent responded to my argument on thoughts, rather than communication, being the primary purpose of language, by citing a study which suggest that '[. .. ] the position to begin thinking stems from communication at the core. ' Yet my opponent has not explained how the study came to this conclusion. I would like to ask my opponent how the researchers came to this conclusion. Meanwhile, I'm afraid that this can only be properly regarded as a bare assertion with an appeal to authority. In fact, I'm not sure what my opponent meant exactly by this. I'd like to ask my opponent what he meant by 'the position to begin thinking stems from communication at the core'. Do you mean that thinking is a form of a communication, or that selective pressures which forced us to communicate led to the development of our thinking ability as an epiphenomenon? My opponent then stated that '[. .. ] language is used as a tool to record and learn to better adapt and equip the communication. ' As I did not understand the first statement clearly, I couldn't tell how it led to this conclusion, and can only comment on this conclusion at face value. Though this is certainly a function of language, there is no evidence that it is the primary one. ObservationsO1) DefinitionsMy opponent wrote, 'I actually do have evidence to back up this claim, however this would interfere with one of the rules with animal communication, so I will reframe from addressing that issue. ' In fact, it does not matter if my opponent's point mentions animal communication. Human communication likely evolved from animal communication. As long as my opponent's conclusion is that human, not animal, language has communication as a primary function, then his argument is not against the rules. Should my opponent's argument be intended as such, I would be grateful if he can bring it to the table. O2) On citing academic workMy opponent appears to have, for several times, brought up studies that confirm his conclusions, but with little explanation of how the studies came to these conclusions. Often, it is not clear where in the source links these were stated, either. I would like to suggest that he explain how these conclusions were came to, such as the reasoning used by the studies or the statistics they provided. Otherwise, my opponent's arguments do seem to lack substance per se. (1) . http://www.merriam-webster.com...(2) . http://www.criticism.com...(3) . http://www.languagesoftheworld.info...(4) Yule, G. : The Study of Language (2010). (5) Dixon, R. M. W. : Basic Linguistic Theory (2010).