Language = Communication? Not Always.

The wonky ways in which we use language.

One of the things that we linguists, teachers, & language enthusiasts love to say about language is that its primary purpose is… what?

Of course, it’s communication! (If you had another word in mind, please let me know. I must know!!!)

Don’t get me wrong — saying this is perfectly understandable and justifiable. Language is the main conduit through which we interact with others, transfer knowledge, share our thoughts and feelings, connect with other humans, and more.

In the modern era, the inherent communicative nature of language has been used as a primary rationale for why we should learn new languages (to communicate with others), and even as the basis for how we now teach language (the hottest language learning approach of the last few decades is Communicative Language Teaching).

But I recently had this idea challenged in one of my classes on pragmatics. My professor posed us with this question: is language ALWAYS used for communication? Or are there other ways in which language is used?

What is required for successful communication?

There are many conceptualizations for what is required for successful communication, but here are a few key concepts to guide us:

1. Shared code (in many cases, language, but can also include gesture, non-linguistic sounds and signals)

2. Shared contextual knowledge

3. Intentionality and relevance

These ideas are useful as we consider what is communication and what isn’t. If one person is speaking Chinese to someone who only speaks Spanish, this is failed communication. If one person is blabbing about Jane’s family drama and the other person doesn’t know anything about Jane or her family members, there is no meaningful communication taking place. Communication is questionable when the person relaying the message didn’t actually mean to convey that message. And communication can fail when the information provided is not relevant to the listener.

With this in mind, below are some ways in which language isn’t exactly used for communicating.

Filibustering

What will politicians do to prevent a bill from being voted on? Whatever it takes! In this case, talk for hours on end with no bathroom breaks. While filibustering is definitely a use of language — it utilizes talking, after all — the contents of the filibuster are certainly not meant to communicate much at all.

Take a look at all the strange things politicians have talked about during a filibuster and this becomes evident. In 1935, Huey Long of Louisiana provided detailed explanations on how to cook famous dishes from his home state. This was especially painful as his 15 and a half hour filibuster carried on into the late hours of the night (and people got hungry).

Was Senator Long’s ultimate communicative purpose really to educate U.S. senators on how to best cook shellfish? Not really. Maybe he was passionate about food in some capacity — he did declare that “people up in this part of the country never have learned to fry oysters as well as we have done down our way” — but his ultimate goal was to stall a bill from being passed, not to share recipes to a rapt audience of amateur cooks who really do want to learn about oysters.¹

Filibusters can be even less communicative than this (which you could argue was still a transfer of food-related knowledge in some capacity). In 2013, Ted Cruz famously read the Dr. Seuss classic Green Eggs and Ham during his 21-hour protest of the Affordable Healthcare Act. And in 1986, Alfonse D’Amato of New York read aloud from the Washington DC phone book as part of his 23 and a half hour filibuster. It’s almost certain that no one would consider this to be meaningful communication. Oysters, children stories, and DC residents’ contact info are entirely irrelevant to the matter at hand.

Sam I Am

Overall, what is being said in a filibuster has little effect on the speaker, other than the underlying message: I oppose this bill and will do anything to stop it. This is meaningful in its way, but the actual contents of the speech have little do to with it.

Journaling

I used to journal pretty religiously in college (and am working on restoring that habit now). While journaling certainly uses language, is there really a communicative purpose involved? Unlike a letter, which is definitely meant to transfer information to someone else, a journal isn’t really addressed to any one person — not even yourself.

Maybe addressing a diary as a person helps us contextualize this in our minds as being a communicative act of sorts, though.

When it comes to journaling, language is better thought of as being used for self-reflection and self-expression. Any “communication” that is taking place is really just in the mind of one individual, as they process their own emotions and feelings. If, a few years down the line, you read old entries, this could be considered more of a communicative act — but the actual process of journaling itself is not really communication.

Word Games and Riddles

Here’s a riddle that ChatGPT dreamed up for me:

“I am not alive, but I grow;

I don't have lungs, but I need air;

I don't have a mouth, but water kills me. What am I?”

…

The answer? Fire!

When we tell riddles like these, what is our intent? Is it to transmit information about fire, or is it to do something else? I would argue that it’s to challenge, engage, and entertain each other. We draw from our existing knowledge to think about the world in a different way and solve a puzzle for our own enjoyment.

There are other less intellectual games that utilize language for non-communicative and admittedly dumb purposes. When I was in middle school, we had an arsenal of spoken “games” that we would “play” with each other. All that it really did was establish an in-crowd of people that “understood the game” and people that didn’t.

Here’s an example. One game is called “secret umbrella.” Someone holds up an imaginary secret umbrella and asks someone else what color it is. It doesn’t matter what color the other person says — as long as they start their reply with “um,” followed by any color, that answer is considered correct by the game initiator.

So is there any communicative goal here? Nope! It’s mainly just to amuse the in-group by generating frustration in members of the out-group, and also to convert more members of the in-group to continue this amusement with other people. (These games generated an INCREDIBLE amount of frustration for me as a kid — I remember a game called “draw a line” that I was solidly in the out-group in for YEARS. I still can’t remember how to play it. Oops.)

The actual “what color is my magic umbrella?” question is irrelevant — it’s a conversation deliberately created for the purpose of confusion, until you figure out the pattern.

Art

Language can also be used for artistic purposes in a way that has almost nothing to do with communication! John Lennon famously utilized this to pen the nonsensical song “I Am The Walrus,” which was intentionally written to defy any attempts at lyrical analysis.

Semolina Pilchard
Climbing up the Eiffel tower
Elementary penguin singing Hare Krishna
Man, you should have seen them kicking Edgar Allen Poe

What exactly is this communicating? Nothing. Nothing at all. And that’s part of the fun.

Another way that language pops up non-communicatively is in the wacky world of foreign language tattoos (Chinese characters are a big one). Sometimes the bearer of the tattoo intends to communicate something about themselves through the meaning of the text, but it’s largely understood that it’s mostly for artistic purposes. (Of course, this can backfire quite humorously when people get tattoos that mean something much different than what they intend.)

And more!

What are some other examples you can think of in which language is not exactly used for communication? This exercise definitely stretched my mind to think of all the ways that language is used in our world, and I would love to hear more examples from you in the comments below.

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you next Tuesday!

1. https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/53827/5-weird-things-done-during-filibusters