Guybrush

Perhaps you could mention something about the primal non-spoken ways of communication such as body language or even more subtle. Sometimes you can have a dislike for someone without knowing why or vice versa or someone might come across as threatening or friendly before they've even turned their attention to you. There's attraction and the way we choose our partners for example .. Visual cues may lend insight into the fitness of the person you're looking at or smells may tell you if their immune system would complement your own if you were to have an offspring together.

A lot of our communication is non-verbal and even takes place in the subconcious.

__________________
Something Completely Different

TheBig3

And I'd argue that linguistics and post-modernist thought cover more about language than a direct topic of philosophy.

I'd argue that the philosophy of language is almost an impossible mountain to grapple with. Its the vehicle we use to convey ideas. In some ways the car defines itself but not really because its not sentient. So people subconciously build the car, and the the car determines through second hand creation, what it is not.

Again that brings it back to deconstructionalist thought. Studying the limitations of language is probably a very dry topic. And by your own discoveries you'd create your own shortcomings.

If you want my advice the outterspace of language (what it can't do) is less facinating than its innerspace (what you can do inside of a language). And seeing as you speak English, you're sitting at the top of an ever evolving, darwinian language that refuses to define itself, even as top scholars attempt to pin rules to it.

Join the "Death to the Apostrophe" movement, get drunk, and throw it into overdrive.

__________________
I've moved to a new address

cardboard adolescent

i think the 'outerspace' is slightly more interesting, though maybe not quite as interesting to talk about since you just end up babbling.

TheBig3

I guess thats why we occupy different disciplines. Poets and orators never cease to impress me with how the language can be crafted to deliver a point as sharp as a needle and as heavy as cannon fire.

Words have moved nations, wiped out races, healed ancient wounds, and prevented nuclear holocaust.

As Churchill once said (paraphrase) "you can deprive a man of his kingdom, his army, weapons, his friends, and his dignity, but if he can command language he's still as formiddable and as dangerous as before" (almost none of that carried over)

__________________
I've moved to a new address

Classof75

"we can only express ourselves through the confines of language" I think many people express themselves through art and music also.

cardboard adolescent

art and music are also languages...

NumberNineDream

We keep studying this subject in school but I don't know why they keep forgetting about sign language. [it's like mutes don't communicate]

We had a chapter in school about "Philosophy and language", it was about the theories of philosophers before the 18th century ... that seemed useless. In means of language I feel Derrida is best.

__________________

Liljagare

What I always thought interesting is that sign language differs from country to country..the differences are actually more vast then dialect differences (say between British and American English..a person who uses American Sign language would not neccesarily be able to understand a person who uses British Sign language even though the spoken language is close enough to understand with few problems..a person from France is more likely to understand a person from Ireland rather than a person from England even though the spoken languages differ for another example).

Vygotsky (Vygotskij) is actually an interesting one to study when it comes to relations between language and thought if you are interested in that tract.