The socially binding commitment with which Locke is most concerned is that philosophical or scientific discourses should not abuse language in any of the common ways, such as using terms that have no idea or no clear idea attached to them.
It is traditional to begin accounts of eighteenth-century linguistic theory with John Locke, and his treatment of language raises the question of the interrelationship of referential and social functions of language noted above. But bearing in mind the cognitive and the social territory that is being disputed and realizing that it is still disputed territory now should help to sharpen appreciation of the work of the writers discussed in this chapter. A linguist like Pieter Seuren, who takes a more formal and logical approach to language and therefore is antagonistic toward such work as Tomasello’s, can also on occasion turn to questions very like those posed by eighteenth-century predecessors: In the evolution of language, which functions of language are primitive or prior, those that assert propositional content, or those that orient humans toward one another in socially binding relations, growing out of their shared needs? 2 Of course, given the changes in (really the invention of) evolutionary biology and formal logic in the intervening two or three hundred years, there are large differences between the research questions of Tomasello or Seuren and eighteenth-century theorists of language. The correspondences between the main lines of research into language in the eighteenth century and research in linguistics in the early twenty-first century are broad and suggestive. The explanation provided above, however, is the work of Michael Tomasello, a current specialist in human and primate communication whose particular argument is that the grammars of human languages are constructed out of human interaction, with people jointly attending to items or events that constitute their common ground. The stages of language development from a posited iconic, gestural origin to an arbitrary, conventional system were concerns of many theorists of language in the eighteenth century and have formed a significant part of their reception in academic and philosophical discourse. Through imitation the sign is then used in a non-natural, conventional manner by the initial recipient: the possibility of the conventional rather than the iconic sign emerges by accident. One proffered solution to this impasse is that the natural, iconic gesture is observed by its intended recipient, who understands the function of the gesture, but not its iconicity. How might the natural gestures employed by people beginning to communicate develop into a language of conventional signs? The two forms of sign are entirely different, one depending on an iconic relationship between the gesture and the referent, the other arbitrary.
Keywords: eighteenth-century linguistics, Enlightenment philosophy of language, language origins, universal grammar, John Locke, James Harris, James Beattie, Thomas Reid, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Etienne Bonnot de Condillac Concluding with a discussion of some likely areas of future research into eighteenth-century linguistic theory (its “cognitivism,” its interest in the human-animal boundary, its interest in language diversity), the article suggests that language studies are crucial to consider when determining what is meant by “the Enlightenment.” This article notes the persistence of questions that occupied theorists of language in the eighteenth century: How does language evolve from gesture to arbitrary signs? Does language convey propositions or social attitudes? These and other questions are addressed in an account of the main areas of linguistic theory in the eighteenth century: the relationship between language and mind, the origin and progress of language, and language as a means of persuasion and an object of taste.
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