Technologising the word and the search for a true ‘linguome’

When the scientists who completed the mapping of the human genome presented their findings to then-President Bill Clinton, he congratulated them on decoding “the language in which God created man (humans)”. As a linguist, I have often wondered if linguistic scientists could one day map out the language in which they first talked to one another.

That would be the “linguome” (linguistic genome). I do not say “human linguome”, because linguistics currently holds that “language” is exclusively human. Speaking of a “human” linguome, would, thus, be tautology. Anyway, the genome, as you know, is the complete genetic information of an organism. The information consists in sequences of DNA (chembe za unasibishaji).

Comparably, our linguome would seek to reveal the complete structural makeup of the linguistic organism. The information may be defined in terms of semes (pronounced like “seems”) or other basic concept familiar to linguists. Since mine is at proposal level, I cannot be overly categorical. I picked on “seme” (minimal signifying unit/chembe ya umaanishaji) from my current preoccupation with semiotics, the systematic study of signifying processes.

Let us, however, not overload the reader with technicalities. Those linguists wishing to join the Linguome Project will no doubt get in touch with me, or strike out on their own, if they do not wish to share the labours and glories of cutting-edge research. With the rest of us, let me briefly share a few reasons why I revealed my grandiose research (dream).

First, as usual, I wish to inform and remind you that scholars and teachers in the humanities or arts are not irrelevant idlers, endlessly and uselessly reciting Shakespeare or recounting the battles of the Thirty Years’ War. On the contrary, arts and humanities scholars are devoted workers dedicated to the sciences and skills that make and keep us human. That our world is threatened with vicious beastliness and reckless inhumanity is no secret to anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear.

Against the inhumanities of intolerance, racism, corruption, violence and gender chauvinism, we humanists explore and teach the values and skills of ubuntu, inclusivity, conflict resolution, ethics, integrity and equity. As I have often said, calling such skills “useless” is nothing short of suicidal madness. Yet raucous and strident voices to that effect are frequently heard these days, not only among our educational “planners” but also along the corridors of our own academic institutions.

Linguists, for example, do not only learn and teach languages. They also scientifically investigate language and languages as instruments of communication, and how they can be optimally used to promote the well-being and development of humankind. As my friend and brilliant literary colleague, Timothy Wangusa, asked in his Makerere professorial Inaugural Lecture, can we imagine “a wordless world”?

Two other language-related experiences also set me reflecting on the need for our proactive and unrelenting engagement with language. One is our recent celebration of International Mother Language Day. A crucial point I did not raise in our chat on the occasion is the main reason why several of our governments are cautious, not to say unenthusiastic, about our home languages. My second experience, which is now a daily haunting reality, is how “silent” (not to say “dumb”) our smartphones have made us.

Regarding home languages and some leaders’ discouragement of them, I hazard a guess that, apart from the oft-mentioned colonial hangovers, the leaders have a genuine fear of the sectarian and divisive potential of these “local” languages in our newly-formed and forming “national” communities. In Kenya, we know that “short-waving” (selectively using home languages) and “tribalism” (ethnic favouritism) are never far apart. Nor is this a new phenomenon. Stories like the biblical “Tower of Babel” one hint at the age-old nature of the problem. We need scientific linguists to help us manage the challenge and maybe turn it into a “power of Babel”, as the Mazrui (Ali and Alamin) scholars suggest in their so-titled text.

About the silencing and dumbing effect of the smartphone, I believe that you yourself have had the experience of walking into a room full of people and feeling as if there is no one there but you. The place is deathly quiet. Everyone is glued to their smartphone, either listening close to the ear, or watching the screen, or texting. I suppose all these activities are useful and legitimate. But are all these people strangers to one another? Could they not share even one live, face-to-face word with one another?

A few decades ago, someone suggested that television had killed the art of conversation. Instead of talking to one another, people had turned to gazing, unidirectionally, at the television screens, which dominated and still dominate many of our living rooms. But the TV “box” now faces stiff competition from the new-fangled gadgets, like laptops, i-pads and smartphones. An international faith leader recently pleaded with his followers, when they gather as families, to try and talk to one another, at least at mealtimes, instead of “talking” to their phones. Did they listen?

The late Jesuit scholar, Prof Walter Ong, strongly influenced my graduate studies in oracy (the spoken word) and orature (oral literature). His book, Orality and Literacy, traces the evolution of linguistic communication from the directly uttered and received word through the printed and read one to (predictably) other forms of communication. He called the process the “technologizing of the word”, and he envisages it in stages, like primary, secondary, tertiary, and so forth.

You could say that utterance was primary, print secondary, electronic audio tertiary and digital audio-visual quaternary. That is a great deal of growth, obviously. But is it development? Have the technological developments of the world made us better communicators? We need professional linguists and communicators to assess the situation and to guide us on how we can improve our performance.

Incidentally, Prof Ong was a student of the famous Canadian communication guru, Marshall McLuhan, who gave us the concept and moniker of the world as a “global village”.

Prof Bukenya is a leading East African scholar of English and [email protected]@yahoo.com